Barack Obama was in town to speak to the National Education Association convention and said something to the effect that he supported a concept of merit pay for teachers, but not anything that’s actually been proposed under that heading. (In fact, looking at the text of the speech, the word “merit” doesn’t appear at all, but the use of “accountability” makes clear what Obama’s talking about.) This was portrayed in the Inquirer as a fairly daring move of telling a major Democratic Party constituency that he supported something they very much opposed, and as TPM Election Central reports, rival presidential candidate Chris Dodd wasted little time in establishing his anti-merit-pay bona fides.
At risk of using anecdotal evidence here, I think this is one of those issues that seems like a complete no-brainer to most people who aren’t teachers. Why shouldn’t people have to do a good job in order to get bigger raises? Isn’t that a necessary incentive to get people to do their job as well as they can? Aren’t performance reviews a pretty standard part of many people’s employment?
From my midway-between-inside-and-outside perspective, I think the historical resistance to the idea of merit pay comes from a few sources. Many teachers are concerned that a merit process would be abused by principals and administrators to punish teachers who don’t get with the program, whatever program the authority structure may have. This is probably a valid concern, and one that I don’t blame any union from fighting for, although it’s not one that’s likely to get sympathy from anyone who has to deal with an unpleasant or demanding boss. I think that the feeling on the part of many teachers that they are underpaid and underrespected leads them to value whatever autonomy they can get. And there’s the very real problem of how in the world you can figure out who would deserve “merit pay� and why. Right now, especially with No Child Left Behind, it seems like the job of teachers is seen as getting students in position to get certain scores on standardized tests. And most teachers appear to hate that job description with the intensity of a thousand suns. So if you put more pressure on them to get those results, as opposed to building children’s thinking skills or building up their self-image or inspiring them to see new possibilities in the world or any of the things that teachers like to think they do, I’m thinking they’re gonna stay crabby.
On the other hand, Obama does say the following in The Audacity of Hope:
There’s no reason why an experienced, highly qualified, and effective teacher shouldn’t earn $100,000 annually at the peak of his or her career. Highly skilled teachers in such critical fields as match and science – as well as those willing to teach in the toughest urban schools – should be paid even more. (162)
So he’s definitely offering some carrot to go with the stick.