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ACTION RESOURCES
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| Responding to the Governor's Attacks |
| Oppose Merit Pay Schemes |
Our Perspective
The Governor has proposed to institute merit pay, rather than adequately fund teacher salaries, in the name of teacher retention, and to reward effective teaching and learning. This tired and discredited idea is put forward now to divert attention from the Governor’s broken promises to the education community and the people of California. Research and past practice doesn’t support merit pay; it does support numerous other tools to boost excellence and retain good teachers. State Senator George Runner has authored SCA 1X to implement the Governor’s idea, which also stretches tenure out to a ten-year process..
Point 1: What matters most to teachers?
There is no research showing merit pay keeps teachers in the classroom. Most merit pay schemes that have been tried have been discontinued. Nothing showed that they succeeded in anything except poisoning the school atmosphere with unnecessary and unproductive competitive pressures. A UCLA study run by Dr. Eloise Lopez Metcalfe—the Center X Teacher Education Program—followed new teachers to track why they eventually stayed in or left the classroom. Compensation was low on their list of reasons. What mattered most was working conditions, including support structures, adequate instructional materials, collegial contact—and respect. At a time when nearly 50% of teachers leave the classroom within their first five years due to low pay, inadequate support, and poor working conditions, we need to find ways to retain good teachers—not drive them away.
Point 2: What keeps people in the classroom?
We know what works to keep good teachers in the classroom. For veteran and new teachers alike, effective ongoing staff development programs provide the kind of backing to help teachers thrive and grow. For new teachers, the most important support is mentoring, so that they can learn from their mistakes and receive positive reinforcement for what they’re doing right. Mentoring builds community as well as confidence. The state-supported Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) and Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment (BTSA) programs were making great progress along these lines. Both have been severely pared back in the last couple of state budgets.
Point 3: Merit pay versus pay for performance
We supported a state program instituted by Pete Wilson and carried on by Gray Davis to reward teachers who become certified through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards with $10,000 bonuses. This was a substantial amount of money for a substantial amount of work, which demonstrated strong results in the classroom. Unfortunately, Governor Schwarzenegger’s budget last year eliminated these bonuses. Similarly, United Teachers Los Angeles bargained with the LAUSD to provide a 15% bonus for particular certifications. There is a difference between “merit pay” and pay for performance. We are not necessarily opposed to the latter under specific circumstances.
Point 4: Paying for Merit Pay
The state continues to face a structural deficit caused by the recession of the past few years, the dot-com bust, and tax cuts that have erased billions of dollars of state income (the vehicle license fee and upper income tax surcharges, especially). If school districts are to pay more to high-performing teachers, they will have to cut other programs (or other teachers’ salaries) to pay for it. If districts acknowledge that teachers are already underpaid, and shouldn’t have to subsidize a merit pay program out of base pay, where will the money come from? In Denver, Colorado, the proposed extension of a pilot pay for performance program to the entire district is contingent on passage of a municipal referendum.
Point 5: Bank Street survey
Although largely anecdotal, the report from the Bank Street School showed that when the school community (parents, students, teachers) was surveyed to find out which teachers were considered to be the best, they turned out to be the ones who had gone to the best schools and who had received the most thorough training and education themselves. This finding correlates with the stronger achievements for students of National Board-certified teachers.
Point 6: What works?
Adequate funding California is last in the country in teacher-pupil ratio, in the number of school nurses and librarians per pupil, and in the bottom quarter of the states in per-pupil funding. We do not have a “spending problem” in public education, as the Governor is fond of saying. We are under-funded. Is $50 billion a lot of money to spend on education? As a figure taken in isolation from anything else, it’s big. But so is California. If California were a country, we’d have the fifth largest economy in the world. We are the most populous state in the United States. We educate six million K-12 students and another two million community college students. If we were to provide them with the same per-pupil funding of New Jersey, we’d be spending another several thousand dollars per student per year.
Real reform During the Nixon administration, an experiment with pay based on student test gains created winners and losers not only among teachers, but students too. To maximize pay, some teachers ignored their best and worst students, concentrating on the middle group, because they assumed the best would score well anyway, and the worst demanded too much time. A far better reform involves supporting and extending proven successes, such as peer assistance and review for beginning teachers and teachers with problems. The real problem we face is retention of good teachers. Teachers who are properly supported in their earliest years will stay longer. They will also create a better environment for their students and for the younger teachers who join them along the way.
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