Opinion pieces in USA Today on merit pay

Our view on education: Merit pay for teachers begins to earn high grades
Experiments prove it works, as long as it’s lucrative and fair.

Three years ago, teachers and other employees at Meadowcliff Elementary in southwest Little Rock were offered pay bonuses for boosting test scores. Shortly after that, principal Karen Carter noticed some unusual events.

Increasingly, cafeteria workers sat with students to chat about school work. Even more startling, the janitor began taking his breaks in the cafeteria reading a book, just to serve as a role model.

And when test scores arrived at the end of the year showing improvement, Carter heard whoops of joy from teachers whose bonuses would help pay off their college bills. The better each of their students did, the bigger their bonuses. The janitor and other support staff were rewarded for the school's overall gains.

Such is the power of "merit pay," a concept long opposed by teachers and their unions.

In many ways, their concern is understandable. Who wants a merit-pay system if principals prone to playing favorites hand out the bonuses? Moreover, how do you separate what Mrs. Jones does in one classroom with what Mr. Smith does next door?

But times have changed. Testing is more sophisticated, and most states have learning standards to complement the testing.

What has changed most are public attitudes. That was heard clearly in 2005, when Denver voters approved a $25 million-a-year tax hike to pay teachers. Voters agreed to raise their own taxes. The catch: Pay boosts were to be based on merit.

The voter sentiment in Denver has proved contagious; other merit pay experiments have broken out in Tennessee, Florida and elsewhere. Many teachers embrace the idea, aware that this is the only way to push teachers' salaries back into the respectable range.

Oddly, there's one group dragging its heels here, the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union. Earlier this week, NEA President Reg Weaver clashed loudly with Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., the chairman of the House education committee, about Miller's federally sponsored merit-pay proposal.

Objecting to merit pay today amounts to opposing a proven tool for making teachers more effective.

Some of the best research on this movement is likely to emerge from Vanderbilt University's new federally sponsored National Center on Performance Incentives. There, researchers set up medical-style control groups of teachers to answer the question: Does merit pay boost student performance?

The center's director, Matthew Springer, offers good advice to schools setting up merit pay programs, such as making the incentives lucrative. (At Meadowcliff, where a private funder backed the experiment, teachers received bonuses ranging from $1,100 to $5,100 this year, depending on individual test score gains. Support staffers got from $500 to $2,000.)

Another key element is that teachers believe that the system is fair. In Denver, the program gave teachers several pathways to winning bonuses.

Can it work?

At Meadowcliff, a poor urban school, tests scores rose about seven percentage points compared with similar schools lacking merit pay, says University of Arkansas professor Gary Ritter. Though it's too soon to tell whether the gains can be sustained over time, it's not too soon to declare that merit pay has earned a chance to succeed.

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Opposing view: Reject federal pay mandates
All teachers deserve competitive salaries, better working conditions.
By Reg Weaver

The No Child Left Behind Act expires this year, and the National Education Association has proposed positive changes in the law. These include expanding early childhood education, smaller classes and extra help for children who need it. But these priorities have been overshadowed by a proposed federal mandate that would base teacher pay on student test scores.

Districts in dozens of states are experimenting with plans that compensate teachers partly based on test results. Local teachers unions have helped create such programs in Denver, Minneapolis and Columbus, Ohio.

What sets these plans apart from the draft language released from the House Education and Labor Committee is that each of them was negotiated and agreed to at the local level. At a time when parents, state legislatures and many others are questioning the No Child Left Behind Act's obsessive focus on high-stakes testing, it would be a mistake to raise the stakes on standardized tests even higher and discourage good teachers from working in schools with high numbers of struggling students.

If we truly want to improve the quality of teachers in the classroom through compensation, let's pay teachers for the knowledge and skills they gain, provide incentives to teach in hard-to-staff schools, and offer salaries competitive with other professions that require a college degree.

In a 2006 MetLife survey, one in four teachers who plan to leave their jobs within the next five years cited low salaries and a lack of control over their own work for their decision. They also reported being frustrated by principals who did not ask for their suggestions and did not treat them with respect.

Federal mandates that tie compensation to test scores can't substitute for a working environment high on trust and meaningful work. And it can't replace a perverse pay scale where teacher wages have fallen 12% since 1993 compared with workers with similar education and skills.

We should invest precious federal dollars in giving all teachers competitive salaries, quality professional development and better working conditions. Too often, it is simpler to tinker with bonuses than to exercise the political will necessary to reform teacher quality at its core.

Reg Weaver is president of the National Education Association.