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Performance pay...Do you agree with it?

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zoebartlett

zoebartlett

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This subject has had me stewing all morning, and I''m curious as to how others feel. I recently left my teaching position for a variety of reasons, one of which was that I strongly believe in certain things that the principal I worked for did not. One of the issues that she does believe in, however, is performance pay for teachers. The district superintendent also believes in this, and it looks like the district is headed that way. I think it''s completely ridiculous to pay teachers based on how well their students do on standardized test scores and how well their observations go.

What do you think about performance pay? It doesn''t have to be based on the teaching profession, by the way. In general, what are your thoughts?
 
I like the concept of performance pay but in many jobs it is next to impossible to measure performance accurately and fairly.

Unfortunately employees will focus on what is measured, at the expense of all the other things they should be doing that are not measured.
 

I am completely against performance pay. I am a 4th grade teacher in NJ. I have noticed over my six years of teaching that principals definitely have their favorite teachers. These are usually teachers that aren't that great, but can do no wrong in the administrator's eyes. Our observations are so subjective that I don't think it would be fair to base our pay on them.



Also, 4th grade is one of the years that the students are required to take a state wide standardized test. My principal places a lot of pressure on the teachers to have the students perform well. We do the best we can with each child, but there is only so much that the teacher can do. Some years the kids do great, others not so much.

That being said, if there was a way that performance could be really measured I would be for it. There are teachers that work their butts off and others who just get by.
 
A part of me agrees with performance pay, but I don''t think it should necessarily be based on standardized tests. I have a huge dislike of standardized tests.

I will say that I really admire Michelle Rhee, the D.C. public schools chancellor (superintendent if you will) and I think her idea to eliminate tenure is a totally the way to go. But, D.C. is an urban school system and I think that''s where teacher performance is really lacking.

It''s a difficult topic, Zoe, but I think that there should be a way to quantify what we do as teachers.
 
In principle it makes sense, aka you are rewarded for going above and beyond ''the call of duty''.

However, it also depends on how you define ''call of duty'' and/or also some might say ''well isn''t your job to give 110% anyway?''. In your original example ZB, some might ask why are teachers getting paid extra for their students doing well? Isn''t that part of their job? (My Mom is a teacher so I know it''s not always that straighfwd).

In corporate, we have bonuses that are based on goals. But as Kenny says many times then you want to focus on those more heavily OR another project might rise to higher priority after the initial goals are set. But if you won''t get ''extra'' pay for the new higher priority project, you won''t want to focus on it...though chances are you have to.

Also many times it depends on how the company is doing as well. Greg''s company has a really aggressive bonus program that is tied into your goals but also how the company does overall. Well what if you do great in your role, but the company doesn''t? Then you get 1/2 a bonus or similar because of what you could not effect, 500 other existing depts.

Performance pay IMO is a great ''nice to have'' but honestly I''d rather have extra money up front in my salary. Then it''s a given instead of a cloud you are chasing..and I also think that when people are paid what they feel they deserve they are worth, they are more likely to give that overachieving 110% than when they feel they are being lowballed or underappreciated.
 
I think that performance pay, in terms of a bonus structure, is a great motivator for staff, but in professions like teaching, benchmarks like evaluations are so subjective, that it''s nearly ridiculous to attempt a standard!

I work in a profession where everything we do in quantified on a bi-weekly basis. If, at the end of a fiscal year, we''ve produced at or above 110% of the rate expected for our current level, we get a bonus, which increases at certain percentage levels.

My mother works in sales where she receives a bonus every year based on meeting and exceeding certain goals set out at the beginning of the year that include things like increasing current sales and introducing new product into what a store carries.

I don''t see, aside from standardized test scores, how this can apply to teachers. And by teaching to a standardized test, students lose out on vast amounts of useful and interesting things they could be learning.

So I guess that I think performance pay is great in areas where success is easy to quantify. I''m not sure teaching is a profession in which this is the case.
 
Former teacher here. I am also one that agrees with the concept of performance pay, but it is impossible to decide who deserves it in a fair way, so should not be a part of compensation.

One problem on this issue that was starting to come up when I was still teaching was what to do about teachers whose subjects were not covered by standardized tests. I was a band director and would not have been eligible for any performance bonuses, along with the other fine arts, industrial tech, speech and a variety of other teachers who were working just as hard as those teaching English, math and science.

In my current job as a buyer, we have performance bonuses. The owner takes the total profit for the previous year and then splits it according to how each store and segment performed versus projections and each other. It is easy to figure and has basis in concrete data--if you were more responsible for the company being profitable than someone else, your bonus is bigger. There is just no way to determine that with teaching.
 
Penn, you''re right, it''s a difficult topic. I think the thing that gets me is that for the teaching profession anyway, we''re encouraged to get a master''s degree and further our education. The idea that teachers pay for a masters to get ahead and then aren''t rewarded for it doesn''t make sense to me. That says to me that superintendents and those in charge who DO favor performance pay must not really value education. Because if they did, they''d support teachers more. I''m only speaking about this profession because it''s what I know. The principal I was recently working for has said that she knows several teachers who don''t do a good job, yet they are being paid as if they are. There must be another way to handle ineffective teachers.
 
Date: 11/6/2009 11:06:06 AM
Author: JerseyGrl81

lso, 4th grade is one of the years that the students are required to take a state wide standardized test. My principal places a lot of pressure on the teachers to have the students perform well. We do the best we can with each child, but there is only so much that the teacher can do. Some years the kids do great, others not so much.

That being said, if there was a way that performance could be really measured I would be for it. There are teachers that work their butts off and others who just get by.
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Well, I think that if there are enough assistant teachers/teachers aids to help out kid who need additional help, then there will be less of a chance that the teacher will be stuck in the position of being, "only so much" they can do.

Last year while volunteering for both kids'' classes, I watched that some kids were exceptional and others weren''t as outgoing and trying as hard. At the beginning of the year, it became fairly obvious certain kids HAD to have an individual aid to help them out. As the year progressed and talks of budget cuts became reality, many of those kids were left without ANY help and then the teacher was stuck trying to help these "special needs" kids, such as slight autism, while working with the general kids. Luckily in my son''s kindergarten class, the teacher had volunteers to help out. I went in EVERY week for at least 3 hours to help out. Without volunteers in the younger grades, the teachers are pretty much screwed. (and keep in mind I have NO childhood educational training and *I* was helping due to the lack of funds.)

I don''t know a lot about the educational system (outside of being friends with many volunteers and some facilty) but was told flat out by one teacher that the entire district is "all about politics."

It would be nice if things were different.

In OTHER jobs, yes, there should be better pay among performance. My DH works much harder and longer hours (50+ per week) than his co-workers and he found out a lazy *** is his department gets paid the same as him. He nearly blew a fuse over that one.
 
Teaching is one area where I think performance pay is 100% reasonable. Teachers get the short end of the stick on pay and benefits in my opinion and really fantastic teachers often go unnoticed. Similarly, really BAD teachers can go unnoticed. I don't think anything that encourages teachers to up their game is a bad thing. Why are you against it?

ETA: I agree with the PPs who said that the benchmarks for determining bonuses etc should not be things like standardized testing.
 
Date: 11/6/2009 11:06:33 AM
Author: pennquaker09
A part of me agrees with performance pay, but I don''t think it should necessarily be based on standardized tests. I have a huge dislike of standardized tests.

I will say that I really admire Michelle Rhee, the D.C. public schools chancellor (superintendent if you will) and I think her idea to eliminate tenure is a totally the way to go. But, D.C. is an urban school system and I think that''s where teacher performance is really lacking.

It''s a difficult topic, Zoe, but I think that there should be a way to quantify what we do as teachers.
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I agree with Penn.

If our performance could be based on student growth, then I''d be all for it. However, it''s a sad fact that standardized tests don''t measure anything worth measuring.

I''m not a big fan of tenure. Too many tenured teachers and administrators abuse it.
 
I started my current job in my 40s, at a union shop, and fairly large company. I will say my first annual review was pretty weird, and was the first time I found that various qualities would be reviewed, but with no financial consequence. There was the confirmation, unsaid, that I''d keep my job. But, it was weird to have how I was considered to have performed have no other consequence except for different check marks on the sheet I was given.
 
Date: 11/6/2009 11:06:33 AM
Author: pennquaker09
A part of me agrees with performance pay, but I don''t think it should necessarily be based on standardized tests. I have a huge dislike of standardized tests.

I will say that I really admire Michelle Rhee, the D.C. public schools chancellor (superintendent if you will) and I think her idea to eliminate tenure is a totally the way to go. But, D.C. is an urban school system and I think that''s where teacher performance is really lacking.

It''s a difficult topic, Zoe, but I think that there should be a way to quantify what we do as teachers.
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I agree with pennquaker, here. I live in the DC area, and I also admire Michelle Rhee for the tough choices she''s making to try to improve the DC public schools.

I definitely believe in performance pay - I think the reason that our public schools are so lacking, is because they are like any other government job - people put in minimal work, but they know that sticking it out year after year will improve their salary and benefits. I am a capitalist, so I believe that financial rewards motivate people to perform well. If they are going to receive financial rewards regardless of how hard they try, well, why bother.

I have to say, I have never worked as a teacher, but I did work for a year at a state university in an administrative position (I was a fundraising coordinator). I had brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars from donors in the year that I worked there, much more than one of my counterparts who had been with the university for several years. However, even though she did nothing except take smoking breaks and work a 6 hour day, while I worked 12-14 hour days and brought in over 10 times the money she did, she was making twice what I made because of "seniority." I thought that surely after all my hard work, I would have earned a hefty raise for the next year.

Not so - the CEO of the university told me that according to the state''s pay structure, she could only offer me a $1000 raise. I gave notice that day and went back to the private sector, where I instantly doubled my salary.

So, the state lost a great employee because they refused to reward great work, but retains myriad mediocre employees who are happy making crappy pay, because they really don''t do any work.

I agree that standardized tests may not be the best way to measure teacher success, but as a product of the public school system who suffered through many bored, negligent and incompetent teachers, I think that any steps that can be taken to correct the failing state of our public schools should be attempted.
 
Date: 11/6/2009 11:06:00 AM
Author: kenny
I like the concept of performance pay but in many jobs it is next to impossible to measure performance accurately and fairly.

Unfortunately employees will focus on what is measured, at the expense of all the other things they should be doing that are not measured.
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Ditto this.
My last job was like this in a way - we were paid "per piece" as opposed to hourly. They let us make a TON of money for awhile (my take-home pay was like $1500 a paycheck, which is when I bought a new car), and then they started cutting the rates and combining work items so we got paid less, and less, and less...and they actually drove me to bankruptcy before I was able to find a new job. I think it''s just a way for a company to be cheap a-holes.
 
Well, my husband has worked 2 different jobs which had the performance pay thing, including his current position. It causes a lot of hard feelings for people, that''s for sure. His department is unique in the company, and has only 2 employees. He is the head. So someone who knows nothing about what he actually does gets to review his performance. That "person" has changed about 3 times in 3 years, so there''s no ongoing information sharing either. It sucks frankly, but what can you do? It''s a way for a company to be able to pay less if they need to make up for shortages elsewhere, right? It doesn''t matter how good you are at your job either, there is no getting the very top level increase in his case. Since he is the boss of his only "colleague", the colleague actually gets the higher review since my husband knows the details, whereas his own reviewer does not. Ugh! Yeah, sucks.
 
I am in my final year to be a teacher and I think "No child left behind" has really made standardized tests be the "standard" that schools compare how well their students with, which in my opinion is COMPLETE BS. We talk about this ALL THE TIME in my classes. It''s ridiculous to measure how well a student is teaching based on a multiple choice test. There are SO many exceptions in a classroom. This is why I don''t know how you would measure performance pay in the teaching profession.

I feel like it''s only possible in professions were you can *see* the amount of work people are doing, as in it''s clearly visible that this person is working hard and it''s paying off.

I certainly think that teachers are undervalued. I am really curious to see how THIS "experiment" works out in the long run. It just opened in September.
 
I believe in many countries teachers are highly paid and highly respected, much as like doctors are here in the states.

It is a tragedy this profession is so undervalued here in the USA.
I cannot imagine a more important person in a society than one who teaches our children.
 
Date: 11/6/2009 12:01:25 PM
Author: Hudson_Hawk
Teaching is one area where I think performance pay is 100% reasonable. Teachers get the short end of the stick on pay and benefits in my opinion and really fantastic teachers often go unnoticed. Similarly, really BAD teachers can go unnoticed. I don''t think anything that encourages teachers to up their game is a bad thing. Why are you against it?


ETA: I agree with the PPs who said that the benchmarks for determining bonuses etc should not be things like standardized testing.
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I agree, HH, that plenty of bad teachers go unnoticed. I just think that if you have a masters or are on your way towards one, and you keep up to date on current research in education (again, for teachers), it''s unfortunate that your pay could be cut if your students don''t test well.
 
Date: 11/6/2009 1:31:27 PM
Author: IloveAsschers13
I am in my final year to be a teacher and I think ''No child left behind'' has really made standardized tests be the ''standard'' that schools compare how well their students with, which in my opinion is COMPLETE BS. We talk about this ALL THE TIME in my classes. It''s ridiculous to measure how well a student is teaching based on a multiple choice test. There are SO many exceptions in a classroom. This is why I don''t know how you would measure performance pay in the teaching profession.


I feel like it''s only possible in professions were you can *see* the amount of work people are doing, as in it''s clearly visible that this person is working hard and it''s paying off.


I certainly think that teachers are undervalued. I am really curious to see how THIS ''experiment'' works out in the long run. It just opened in September.
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IloveAsschers -- ugh, don''t get me started on no Child Left Behind. I think it''s 100% reasonable for teachers to be held accountable for doing the best job they can, but in my opinion, No Child Left Behind doesn''t support teachers at all.
 
I also think that being a good teacher is SO subjective. Some things work for some teachers and some things don''t. Some teachers text-book teach and some teach without them. One isn''t better than the other, depending on how you use the materials. BLAH I have spent so many hours on this topic. Teaching is a hard thing to group with other professions, that''s all I can say!
 
I cannot speak in terms of education, since I am not a teacher...however, I will say that my profession is all performance pay based. We call it "commission"...you work, you get paid...you don''t work, you don''t get paid. How successful you are is in direct correlation with your clients happiness and willingness to return. You build your business and you are essentially the only one who can control your pay.

In may ways this is a wonderful thing. It can mean endless opportunity to make as much money as an individual is motivated to make. A stylist who has happy, repeat clients can easily pull 6 figures a year working 4 days a week. However, on the flip side, it can mean that a stylist who is new and inexperienced without a cliental following can really be poor for a long time due to no fault of their own without a way to make their situation better.

I think there are some professions that can really benefit from performance pay...others not so much.
 
Growing up with two parents in the teaching profession and seeing and hearing all the internal politics I have to say I do not believe in pay based on performance on standardized tests. I do agree that there are always some teachers that are better than others but standardized tests are really not a good way to quantify it. For example, my father was a high school english teacher for over 30 years and he taught the lower level english and SAT prep classes while the superintendant's right hand guy taught all of the honor roll english/SAT prep classes. Obviously, the other guy's class had college bound students who were scoring better than my dad's class on the standardized tests. My dad tried to get his kids to listen and learn and the kid's really did love him (he was voted best teacher by the kids and also gave his time by being yearbook, ski club,and soccer advisor) but to say that the other guy should get higher pay cause he happened into this job with the advanced learning kids is ridiculous.

Also, don't get me started on how absurd standardized tests can be. My father retired because he was so sick of not feeling like an english teacher anymore, just a test preparer. He went from teaching literature like "The Sound and the Fury" and "Of Mice and Men" to almost solely teaching for the standardized tests. One of the best ways to learn to write effectively and understand language is done by reading books and seeing sentence structure. With so much focus on making sure test scores are up to par kids are losing their basic reading and writing skills. It's frankly very sad, IMHO.
 
I don''t even understand how performance pay can be accurately calculated. My cousin teaches honors classes. Of course all of her students do well on all the tests. My aunt teaches at-risk students and her students don''t necessarily do well on tests. Also, my aunt is teaching things that should have been learned in elementary school in terms of social skills, manners, etc. She may or may not be doing more work than my cousin, but to have one get extra pay based entirely on academic testing just doesn''t make sense to me.
 

I am against it for several reasons. One, as things stand, it will not work, and will ultimately have the effect of driving even more teachers out of the profession. This will not result in only the better teachers remaining, but rather in more teachers with lots of enthusiasm but even fewer mentors to get them through the rigors of the first 5 years and beyond. Teaching will not be a career, it will be something that NO ONE does as a career but only as a waypoint onto something less stressful and with a more fair and simple pay scheme. Considering that even WITH proper mentoring, it takes about 2-3 years before a new teacher can get his/her head above water to breathe a bit, this will be more counterproductive than most people realize. The second, is that performance needs to be based on what YOU do, not what another does, which makes teaching a particulary bad profession to apply the paradigm of performance pay to. Performance pay for teachers assumes several things, all of which are fallacies.


One of the first and foremost fallacies, is that teachers are solely responsible for student performance. The factors affecting student performance are varied, with many of them beyond the control of teachers. Home life and environment counts for more than any of us wish to admit. To expect teachers to overcome what amounts to some utterly unreal conditions at home by sheer teaching like their hair is on fire, is unrealistic and unfair. If the child is yelled at, abused, malnourished, under-rested, their PARENTS can''t even read, or speak English, or any number of things, there is only so much a teacher can do in the alloted time to mitigate this.



Another fallacy, is that all children will apply themselves equally. We all knew them - those kids that wouldn''t engage in even the best teacher''s class. They still exist. They will always exist. Being engaged should not be, indeed can never be, dependent solely on the skill of the teacher at presenting the material. Children are NOT little tabula rasas to be passively written upon. They must pull the will from inside to do this. They must be WILLING. Learning is NOT always a laugh-riot or exciting, and applying oneself to things that aren''t thrilling is a skill that every person must learn. Bottom line, teachers should NOT be considered inferior simply because they will not or cannot be a "performer". But you see this expectation more and more. Make it EXCITING! If the child won''t engage THIS way, then try THAT way. Great in theory, but it doesn''t work in a 50 minute class.

Another is that all children can learn to the same level. And this is a biggie. We''ve created a society in which only a college graduate can actually thrive. Gone are the jobs we once had in abundance and which served the abundance of PEOPLE who had either no desire or apptitude for higher ed. The goal of universal college degrees is a pipedream that we need to give up so that we can solve the larger problem of what to do about making a society in which ALL have a chance to at least make a decent living. I''m not arguing against high standards, but until we admit that education will not result in everyone being a dr or lawyer, and in fact that college prep classes are not appropriate for all, we will not be able to see the problem clearly.


Another is the disparity of pressure and expectation on elementary teachers versus highschool teachers. An elementary school teacher is not in the crosshairs like the 11th or 12th grade teacher, who gets pointed at as the last person who had contact with the child. If one of them fail, well, there is still many years of "chances" left to remedy deficiencies. Highschool is where the rubber meets the road, and where people start seriously pointing fingers. The highschool teacher is receiving the good, or bad, of 10-11 years of OTHERS'' maybe small, but perhaps accumulated failures, and again, can only do so much with material that has been molded for many years before they had their shot.


And last of course, is the fact that not only do standardized tests not take any of these factors into account, they do not test learning as much as test-taking. Teaching to tests results in brittle kids who are scared of anything that isn''t a multiple choice. LIFE is not multiple choice.


Add to that the administrative favoritism and BS that goes on in ANY organization, and the fact that the administrators in many schools, have the power to doctor those numbers with great impunity, and you have a recipe for a big stinking mess.


I could go on and on, but I will stop and just say that if my career success was completely dependent on the success or failure of another human being, I don''t think I could take it. I''d choose another path. And many will...

 
As a retired teacher, I saw how it worked in my first couple of years of entering the profession. In our area, it was called ''merit pay'' and based loosely on some guidelines initiated by our board. There were teachers who ''went above and beyond'' in terms of staying at school later in the day or coming in at 7am so that the kids who wanted to practise their skills in the gym could do so safely. On the other hand, there were those who had huge marking loads. Who deserves more money??

The merit pay always appeared on the September cheques based on the ''performance'' of the previous year. Word got around very quickly about who got ''touched'' and the resentment was almost palpable in subsequent staff meetings. Those offended were LOUD and very vocal in their assessments, and even worse, their resentment played out for the entire year.

Thankfully, the whole concept was dropped after two years as the flaws far outweighed any benefits.
 
ksinger, your post makes me want to jump up and down shouting YES, WHAT SHE SAID!!!! Especially the part about the expectation on teachers to make it exciting. In my district, the buzzwords are "rigorous, relevant and rewarding." If your students aren''t "engaged" then you just aren''t doing enough to make the lesson "relevant." However, the test that measures performance for the subject I teach (h.s. math) is the SAT which all h.s. juniors in Maine are required to take. There aren''t many questions on there made to measure a student''s learning of the math relevant to a 16 year old -- which tends to not go much further than how much is my cell phone bill going to be if I don''t get an unlimited texting plan!

ZoeB, in my district teachers are rewarded financially for continuing their education. Our pay scale is divided into "lanes" with 5 lanes and 10 step increases per lane. As with most districts, we get a step increase in pay every year. If you don''t continue your education, you start in Lane 1 Step 1 and after 11 years you''ll be in Lane 2 Step 1 and so on. However, every time you complete a certain number of "salary contact hours" you get to change lanes. These hours are accumulated by taking courses and completing district workshops. So, if you are in Step 5 of a lane and get in enough of these hours, you can jump to the Step 1 pay scale of the next lane.

In theory, this looks like a good method of performance based pay raises in that the teacher is responsible for his/her own "performance." In practice it doesn''t work. Sure, there are good teachers who become better teachers through more training. But there are also bad teachers who are great students. They are happy to take course after course but their own students don''t benefit at all. In fact, they can be so busy with their own schoolwork that they have LESS time to devote to teaching than a teacher who dedicates herself to her students.

Has anyone ever checked the reviews at ratemyteacher.com? I''m always amazed at how right on the money kids are. There are incredibly honest reviews whether the teacher is liked for being a pushover or respected for being tough yet fair. I think high schools should get student input when measuring teacher performance. If you threw out the top 15% and the bottom 15% you''d likely get a pretty accurate assessment of whether or not you had a "good" teacher.
 
Ksinger -- what a great post! I totally agree!

I really like the area where we moved to but if we had kids, I wouldn''t send them to this school district. I''m not sure if they''re all similar, but in general, the schools I''ve seen in the south have a way different view of education than the schools I''ve taught at in the north. I don''t mean to overgeneralize, but that''s been my experience. To me, taking away "extra" pay for a master''s degree sends a clear message that those districts don''t value education. If they don''t recognize the education that their teachers have, that''s something I can''t understand.
 
If it was somehow structured in a way where the truly amazing, involved, caring teachers got it? YES! The way most schools do it? NO!
 
I didn''t know that you taught in Maine, Maria D.
I may have to pick your brain soon!
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I haven''t read through all the responses. My thought on the subject outside of the teaching profession is that most jobs are paid based on performance. You get a salary out of college based on your experience and it slowly increases with promotions based on performance. I''m in agreement with it. Last year I got a significant boost to my salary ($20k more) based on performance without getting promoted.

That said I think the teaching profession is a whole other animal. I taught a kindergarten class yesterday as part of our corporate community outreach. During their recess I was chatting with the teacher and asked her how important is parental involvement. She gave me an example of one student that still could not read basic words, didn''t know his colors or numbers. But when she asked him if he knew the # 25 he said no but that it was a lot of something with a G. It''s points you get when playing Mario Kart (don''t remember the name). She spends a lot of time teaching him but can''t get through. I would imagine that her overall test scores would be skewed as a result which wouldn''t be fair to her IMO
 
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