Education (Part 6): Merit Pay (continued)

The state of New Jersey is seriously planning to introduce procedures where teachers’ jobs and salaries will be rated based on how well their students do in the classroom. To a non-educator, that sounds like a no-brainer. Why shouldn’t teachers be judged by their amount of success? However, there are several major problems with this proposal. In my prior discussion of Merit Pay (on October 5, 2010), I discussed how the differences in communities affect a teacher’s success, and how it is almost impossible to take that into consideration when evaluating teachers.

Now I would like to discuss two other serious issues which will have major effects on teacher evaluation: (1) who is doing the rating? And (2) on what criteria?

Currently in education, which teachers generally receive the most acclaim both from their administrators and from the community? The answer is simple: winning coaches. Putting together a few good football teams is a guaranteed way to win best-teacher awards, be honored at Board of Education meetings, be profiled in local newspapers, and–perhaps most ridiculously–be promoted to an administrative position.

So what does this mean as far as future teacher ratings? Will successful coaches have an unfair advantage on earning merit pay over other teachers? My gut instinct says yes.

As for criteria, It is very likely that students’ grades in a teacher’s classes be a major factor in the teachers’ evaluation? If so, have you considered what effect this will have on teachers’ standards? What is the easiest way to improve students’ grades? Lower the standards of the class.

In fact, I would like to make the hypothesis that the biggest drawback in public education currently is that teachers are already forced to lower their standards. This begins with Boards of Education whose main concern is being re-elected, then reinforced by administrators whose raises are based on how much grief the Board of Education receives from parents in that administrator’s school. Teachers who maintain high standards and are demanding of their students, unless they happen to have the fortunate situation I had with my classes filled with immigrants and children of immigrants who supported education whole-heartedly, are generally beaten down by administrators to lower their standards.

I have seen that happen repeatedly. In my former district, superintendents and principals periodically looked over teachers’ marking period grades and unilaterally ordered all teachers whose grades were lower than acceptable to raise those grades. They never questioned the teachers as to whether the students deserved higher grades, nor did they look at the 8th grade standardized scores to see if particular classes had overall lower achieving students. What they did was demand higher grades under any circumstances.

Many teachers have resisted the encouragement to raise undeserving students’ grades in the past, but that is not likely to continue under the merit pay system. If a teacher’s salary is partially dependent on how many of their students get good grades, that teacher would be self-destructive not to raise those grades for their own protection.

Here’s another problem: I know several districts where the supervisors and administrators are particularly incompetent. After Boards of Education hire people to fill those positions, it looks really bad in the public eye if they later admit that those leaders are incompetent and remove them. So almost without exception, incompetent administrators and supervisors are protected for the rest of their careers.

So who suffers by this refusal to remove incompetent administrators and supervisors? Ultimately, the quality of education. I know a school where one supervisor is both incompetent and fixated on his own power. He never takes advice from his teachers, never even discusses his program with them. Rather he makes inane decisions and unilaterally imposes them without any explanation or justification for their usefulness. Basically, he is destroying the program by mandating that students feel good about themselves, receive high grades no matter how little they actually learn, and are totally unprepared for college afterwards. His favorite two teachers in the department are the two weakest teachers–one of whom is basically incompetent–but both of them know how to play the buddy-buddy game with the supervisor, while the other teachers have developed an obvious dislike for the incompetent bully.

To make matters worse, the principal of the school is a buddy of the supervisor who defends him no matter who complains about his incompetence and the destruction of the program.

Which brings up another major problem with public education which I have never seen discussed in the media or by our esteemed governor: all the blame is placed on so-called incompetent teachers, yet nobody seems to care about incompetent administrators and supervisors, who ultimately have a more disastrous effect on entire schools than any one teacher possibly could.

In light of this, is it likely the grandiose plans to improve education by pinning all the blame on failing teachers will actually work? Probably not, if incompetent supervisors and administrators are the one’s ultimately making the decisions. Rather, merit pay will increase the power of the incompetent leaders, ultimately lowering the quality of education in the state and, inevitably, turning the general public even more so against teachers whom they will view as the core of the problem, and prolong the cycle of failure.

Thanks heavens my sons are not in public schools anymore. I think I got out just in time as well.