Real Reform Merit Pay

Edspresso has posted an outline of what they think real teacher merit pay would look like:

First, pay for performance in education is and should be used to describe only those pay scales/arrangements where a significant portion of an educator's salary is determined by their accomplishments in educating children. There are different ways to calculate this, but we'd mainly endorse basing this solely on the value the teacher has added to each child, added up and averaged out over the classes he/she actually taught. That is one major part of paying for performance but as the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) outlines there are a few additional factors, including paying more for additional responsibility, skills, and some aspect of peer and management review.

There are bonus programs masquerading as merit pay where entire faculties earn a bonus if various things happen to a school. That's silly. It masks the people who aren't pulling their weight and obscures those who are so great they should be receiving tens of thousands more! (link in original)

Admittedly, too often teacher merit pay gets bogged down in the details of how appraisals will be done, who does the reviews, etc. Edspresso looks like they are trying to take a step back and talk about how a program would ideally look.

I have a slightly different take. First, merit pay and bonuse should be real and they should be substantial. I get bonuses in my job and while I am glad to get them, $500 or $1,000 in a quarter (when compared against my base salary) are not a real incentive to improve my work or my billing. The same thing applies to teachers, $1,000-$3,000 in a year are not much of an incentive, particularly after the IRS and state tax agencies take their bite--which because it is bonus pay is taxed at teh highest marginal rate, regardless of what your normal rate is--there is not much left over--perhaps as little as $500 or less depending on your tax situation.

Bonuses need to be substantial. For the top performing teachers, I would like to see bonuses on the range of 20-25 percent of annual base salary. For a teacher earning $40,000 per year--that comes to $8,000 to $10,000 bonus. That is a real bonus and probably should only be given to the teachers showing the most value added. Smaller bonus can be paid to some teachers, but I don't think any real merit pay bonus can be considered a bonus unless you are talking about at least 10 percent of base salary. Bonuses on this level provide enough incentive for teachers to really work at improving their skills and classroom practices. Such bonus winners would also then be in demand from other teachers serious about getting top bonuses that everyone will start to improve.

I have heard ideas that once a teacher wins a bonus, they are ineligible the next year. Absolute rubbish. Any teacher who can sustain top performance year after year deserves not only the bonuses they earn but a massive pay raise on top of it. While minimum service criteria may be needed, like the number of days worked in a year (so as to avoid teachers hired in the middle of a year or teachers who take a a mid-year leave of absence are exempted from consideration), everyone should be eligible, regardless of past performance.

I differ a bit with Edspresso about facility bonuses. I think facility bonuses could be quite useful to spur competition between schools. The more schools compete to improve on one another, the more our students will benefit. There may be other criteria involved in school bonuses, such as teacher retention, evaluations of the school's atomosphere, additional professional development training, etc. that could be considered, but school based bonuses could help.

A school bonus of $3,000 to $4,000 per employee could spur the competition. There is nothing wrong with rewarding the teachers and the schools that have the best performance record.

Any merit pay scheme must be substantial, must be immediate and the criteria must be objective and publicly available, or at least available to other teachers/administrators so that no one can question the process. Merit pay, pay for performance or whatever you want to call it, must be the basis for attracting and retaining great teachers. Great teachers beget great teachers because everyone wants that bonus, particularly when the bonus actually is a bonus.