Two weeks ago the U.S. Department of Education granted $442 million to school districts all over the country as part of the Teacher Incentive Fund. The program was designed to help school districts around the country implement merit-based pay programs for teachers and principals. In Wisconsin, the Milwaukee Public School District was awarded more than $7 million to conduct a pilot program in 16 schools.
It is hard to deny something must be done to improve the Milwaukee public school system. It is the 31st largest school district in the nation with over 35,000 students. In a report with data from the 100 largest public school districts from the 2005-2006 school year, Milwaukee’s high school dropout rate of 10.5 percent is much higher than the report’s average of 6.9 percent and the state average of 2.2 percent. Another report comparing reading comprehension scores in 18 of the largest school districts puts the Milwaukee school district near the bottom.
The Teacher Incentive Fund will allow the Milwaukee School District to evaluate teacher performance based on several factors, including student test scores. This is the sticking point for most opponents of merit-based pay. A preliminary study at Vanderbilt University showed merit-based pay offered to middle-school math teachers in Nashville failed to increase the test scores of the students over three years. Opponents argue there is a limit to how much influence a teacher can have on the test scores of their students, and implementing a merit-pay system may punish excellent teachers whose students don’t perform well on tests.
Of course, performance on standardized tests doesn’t always correlate to intelligence or ability, and judging a teacher based solely on test scores will unfairly punish teachers who are teaching in urban districts, where test scores are usually lower. But, if merit pay is based on other factors, such as mentorship of beginning teachers and willingness to teach hard-to-staff subjects, the school district may start to see the quality of their teachers increase over time.
What the Vanderbilt study didn’t measure may be more important than what it did. It didn’t measure retention of excellent teachers. It didn’t measure how much more interest in the teaching profession was generated among talented college students. It didn’t even measure the long term effects of merit pay on student standardized test scores. These are all potential effects of implementing a merit pay program, and dismissing the program before considering these effects would be irresponsible. It is worth studying the effects of the program in the long term and implementing it in a real world situation is the only way to see these effects.
The best way to ensure merit is evaluated fairly would be to compare teachers at a school to other teachers at the same school, rather than comparing teachers between schools. This way, teachers at a lower-performing school could get the same benefits for improving their classes’ test scores as teachers in higher performing schools. The other crucial element for the program will be to emphasize the mentoring and “career ladder” aspect of the program. Skilled and experienced teachers should be encouraged to pass down the wisdom they have accumulated over the years, and collaboration should only help to improve the quality of teaching at any school. The plan also puts responsibility on principals to understand the issues at their school and be involved in the teaching process.
By no means is merit-based pay a magic wand solution to the issues plaguing the Milwaukee School District. But it may be a step forward in encouraging teachers to take more interest in those students who need their help the most.
Madhuri Setaluri ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in genetics.