Merit Pay for Teachers?

Last week I read an article in AM NY, stating that teachers in underachieving schools would receive merit pay if their students’ test scores improved.

Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? But it isn’t.

First off, it has already been shown that SAT scores are not all that closely correlated to success in college. After the terrible scoring glitch two years ago, when several thousand students were given the wrong grades on the SAT (most of them downgraded and a few hundred upgraded) there has been more of a push to do away with them as the entrance key or stumbling block to college. There are a number of schools that no longer even look at the SAT scores.

So there’s no real reason to suspect that all the standardized tests we are shoving down kids’ throats nowadays tell us much more than how kids perform on standardized tests. The burden of testing has grown enormously and teachers, parents and students alike complain that teachers are “teaching to the test” rather than teaching students to think for themselves.

Worse still, if teachers receive a bonus for bringing up the test scores, there’s a powerful incentive to bring up the test scores by any means necessary. There’s already that incentive in schools where principals stood to be removed from their positions if test scores did not improve. What happened?

Cheating, of course, instigated by the teachers rather than by errant students. I heard of one teacher who posted the answer sheet near the pencil sharpener and told students to keep sharpening their pencils as often as necessary. I’m sure the students got the idea. Another woman, a retired teacher I’m friendly with, told me that she taught the fourth grade, and when the time came for them to take the ELA, she would read the correct answer a bit louder than the others. Again, one supposes the students took the hint.

Not only that, but students who are known to be doing poorly are often encouraged to stay home on the day of the test. This raises the school’s overall test scores too, but it’s hardly an accurate reflection of reality. At Inwood House, I learned that pregnant girls are often encouraged to leave school by their guidance counselors, partly because there is still a stigma against them, and also because they, too, are viewed as bringing down the school’s testing scores.

So merit pay for teachers who bring up test scores in an underachieving school is more problematic than it seems. There’s got to be a better way than all this constant testing, to help students learn. Merit pay is not the answer.