Merit Pay: Buzzword or Real Education Reform?

As if public schools don't have enough on their plate already, a contentious and protracted debate regarding teacher compensation is taking place at school districts across the country. For decades, students, teachers, parents, and administrators at all levels of education -- including post-secondary schools -- have clashed in disagreement over the advantages, or shortcomings, of a merit or performance-based pay structure. This compensation plan, which essentially proposes a direct link between teachers' salaries and the performance and success of their students, has seen fits and starts throughout the past few decades in the United States, but was originally an experiment with origins in 18th century England.

Over the past few years, however, merit pay has reemerged as a buzzword in education reform and battle lines have been drawn. Though some are still on the sidelines, remaining neutral and awaiting further negotiation and details, there are effectively two distinct camps within the broader debate: teachers and their unions, and the administrators and other advocates of performance-based pay.

Obama's Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, is a long-time vocal supporter of performance-based pay, and because Obama has made it clear that he supports teacher compensation reform, Duncan certainly has the president's support. Whether the wind is at his back is another story, though. Teachers and, to a larger extent, their unions, are the Democratic Party's bread and butter, and if the Obama administration succeeds to gain broader support for merit pay with unions, it will be a feat of political tightrope. At the same time, the current state of the economy looms, pressuring and influencing the conditions of the debate. Both Obama and Duncan have cited the downturn and general loss of tax revenues as all the more reason to enact education reform now.

The National Education Association (NEA), the largest union in the United States, represents 3.2 million members and, according to its Web site, "opposes federal requirements for a pay system that mandates teacher pay based on student performance or student test scores." The members maintain, however, that they would be "open to compensation innovations that enhance preparation and practice that drive student performance" as long as such proposals meet criteria such as agreement through collective bargaining, or a 75 percent vote of support. When Duncan spoke at an NEA conference in San Diego earlier this month, the 6,500 teachers in attendance made sure he knew where they stood on this issue, as they did when Obama spoke at the same conference a year before.

Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools system, is quite familiar with NEA, but the relationship isn't exactly warm and friendly. Rhee took over the expensive but failing D.C. public school system in 2007, and immediately made more enemies than friends. According to a 2008 Time profile on Rhee, "She has shut 21 schools -- 15 percent of the city's total -- and fired more than 100 workers from the district's famously bloated 900-person central bureaucracy. She has dismissed 270 teachers. And last spring she removed 36 principals, including the head of the elementary school her two daughters attend in an affluent northwest-D.C. neighborhood."

These drastic measures are what Rhee sees as crucial steps towards fulfillment of her pledge to make the D.C. public school system the highest-performing urban district in the country, and its educators the highest-paid. Rhee has proposed arguably the most aggressive merit pay bid in the country: teachers can make up to $131,000 after bonuses if they give up tenure for the first year of their new contract and agree to a review of their effectiveness as a teacher. Rhee has famously been entangled in a nasty fight with the D.C. teachers unions (who have the support of the NEA), though she touts the support of D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, newspaper editorial boards, and even Obama himself. Many are looking to the outcome of the merit pay dispute in D.C. as a harbinger for the rest of the country.

In the West, the Denver Public School system is implementing its own version of performance pay. Its ProComp (short for Professional Compensation System for Teachers) program has garnered national attention over the past few years for its innovative approach to compensation: teachers are paid a base salary, then awarded bonuses by meeting any of nine objectives, such as attending professional skills courses, passing evaluations, working at high-needs schools, or meeting objectives they set for their students. As expected, the unions have quarreled with administrators over the specifics of the plan, but many look to Denver's program as an example of a school district and its teachers union attempting to reach reform-minded goals through collaboration. Though there are signs that student performance levels are rising, overall achievement is still low, so we will have to wait and see the overall effectiveness of ProComp.

Finally, in Ohio, the state legislature decided earlier this year to begin implementing broad-scale performance-based funding for its public colleges and universities. Currently, while there does exist performance-based funding in the form of special supplemental grants, Ohio public colleges and universities are funded based upon enrollment data. The new plan dictates that funding would be calculated based on courses successfully completed by students, also taking into consideration the average cost of programs. (Community colleges and university branch campuses are not subjected to the same funding formulas.) Critics say that this plan is a one-size-fits-all approach, which has raised skepticism and doubt among various campuses. Furthermore, they say that implementing such a strategy during the economic crisis is asking for trouble.

Throughout these various disputes over the years, performance-based pay certainly has gained as many friends as enemies. It's safe to assume that everyone involved has at least agreed on a few premises: that we need to find a better way to reward good teachers, and those who are ineffective need to be retrained or replaced; and that there must be objective as well as subjective metrics by which we evaluate our teachers -- student test scores cannot be the only measurement.

While the debate continues, it is important to keep in mind that any true education reform must recognize that social issues such as poverty and health care will continue to adversely affect the outcome as long as they exist. If all parties involved cannot at least agree on this, are proposals such as merit pay just distracting us from the larger issues at hand? We will have to continue looking toward places like Denver, Washington D.C., and Ohio for answers.

You should follow The Cram on Twitter