FAYETTEVILLE : Educator advises adjusting merit pay
Posted on Saturday, October 4, 2008
FAYETTEVILLE — Teacher merit pay plans are more easily implemented when school boards consider incorporate factors other than student test scores to measure teacher performance, a public policy researcher said.
“You’re trying to put market ideas into a non-market systems,” said Paul Teske, dean of the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver. “It either takes a long time or it takes some public policy fixes to make those policies work the way you want them to work.”
Teske spoke Friday as part of an education reform lecture series at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.
Through performancebased pay, teachers are compensated based upon growth in their students’ achievement, most frequently measured through standardized test scores used to hold schools accountable under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.
Some advocates see the plans, also known as merit pay, as a way to boost teacher accountability. Other advocates hope differentiated pay will attract more qualified and motivated candidates to teaching.
But teachers’ unions generally oppose the plans, implemented most frequently on a district level, claiming that factors contributing to test scores are not entirely under their control, Teske said.
Teachers, acclimated to standardized pay scales based on education and experience, are also uncomfortable with the idea of pay differentiated from their peers, he said.
Merit pay is based on a philosophy Teske said that favors incorporating successful business principles, such as competition into the public education system. But educators must realize that ideas from the private sector don’t always easily translate into public schools.
Successful plans focus on the qualifications of the teacher, not just the achievement of the student, he said.
“It’s not just about getting higher student achievement. It’s about helping teachers get better at what they do,” he said.
In 2007, the Rogers School District rejected $ 2 million from the Walton Family Foundation to start a merit pay program after failed attempts at securing federal funding and opposition from a local teacher’s union.
The Arkansas Department of Education announced in June it had selected the Lincoln and Cross County school districts to start a state Rewarding Excellence in Achievement Program merit-pay plan, which bases 40 percent to 60 percent of a teacher’s salary on knowledge, skills and student performance.
Eight-nine percent of Lincoln teachers voted to implement merit pay after the district agreed to use indicators other than student performance to calculate pay bonuses.
Factoring peer evaluations, placement in difficult-to-fill positions and professional development efforts into pay helped smooth the process for the Denver teachers’ union to vote in favor of the district’s 2004 $ 25 million ProComp pay plan, Teske said. The resulting plan is not purely market-based because it incorporated some difficult-todefine, subjective measures, but it’s a step in the right direction, he said. Teske doesn’t anticipate a significant measurable increase in student test scores until teachers have had several more years to adjust to the ProComp plan, and more experienced teacher opt in to the pay adjustments. “The bigger effect will be the cultural one” from teachers learning to adjust to differentiated pay, Teske said.
To contact this reporter: eblad@arkansasonline. com
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