Governor Should Consider Teacher Merit Pay
Governor Ted Strickland is in the middle of a two-month-long series of
forums about education reform in Ohio. Called the "Governor's
Conversation on Education," these meetings provide an opportunity for
citizens to voice their concerns, opinions and ideas about how to
improve our public schools. How, if at all, the governor will actually
use this input to guide his education policy is unclear, but it is
important that Ohio's education reform agenda not devolve into an
incoherent grab-bag of miscellaneous proposals. Instead, the state
should focus on those reforms that have proven effective in producing
better educated students.
Research
on policies and programs for reforming K-12 education rarely achieves a
consensus. An exception to this rule is the significant impact of
teachers on student learning. It is now widely agreed that the
difference between a high and low quality teacher can determine whether
a student succeeds of fails. The contribution of a teacher can impact
whether students move up multiple grade levels in a single year or fall
behind irrevocably. Because the research so clearly shows that having
good teachers is one of the most important factors for student
achievement, Ohio should focus reform efforts on ways to improve
teacher quality.
Most education reforms to date have failed to
address problems of recruiting exceptional new teachers, retaining the
most successful ones, and improving the current teaching workforce.
Merit pay is one measure that some states, including Ohio, have begun
to explore as a practical way of improving teacher quality. Merit pay
need not be a scary concept. Rather, through collaboration between
local school officials and teachers incremental changes to the
compensation structure of school staff can be accomplished. In
particular, the use of performance-based bonuses may be a much better
starting point than attempting to alter staff salaries.
Well-designed
merit pay plans provide incentives that help schools recruit, retain
and reward the best teachers. A quality merit pay program rewards
teachers and principals who meet or exceed established levels of
performance as measured by student achievement growth and supervisor
evaluations. The central idea of merit pay is that attaching monetary
bonuses to outcomes, rather than to inputs such as professional
development, will encourage improvements in the quality of instruction
that will in turn lead to improved student performance.
There are
several key factors that distinguish successful merit pay programs.
First, the measures of staff performance need to be clear and
transparent. They should also be focused primarily on objective
outcomes such as student performance on state exams. Second, the
amount of the financial awards must be large enough to motivate
educators to work harder and change their practices. Finally, such
plans need to provide both individual and group awards. The individual
awards guard against staff members who may believe they can get a free
ride on the efforts of others, while the group awards promote a
collaborative school climate.
In a new report, the Buckeye
Institute has developed a merit pay plan that offers a practical and
efficient injection of market-based incentives through the introduction
of bonuses that reward excellence. The practical bonus-for-performance
system works with the existing workforce and can be put in place
without significant increases in education spending.
Specifically,
teachers could receive bonuses of up to $10,000, $7,000, and $4,000.
Variation depends upon subject taught, professional responsibilities,
supervisor evaluation and student achievement. The central feature of
the plan is that the largest portion of the potential bonuses is based
on measures of individual classroom growth and school-wide growth in
student achievement.
Governor Strickland should pursue a
state-funded merit pay program that provides funding to school
districts that volunteer to participate and design plans that have the
key features found to improve student performance. Current policies in
Texas, Florida and Arkansas provide a solid template for the Buckeye
State.
If the governor decides against including merit pay in his
reform agenda, local school systems should move forward on their own.
The merit pay plan the Buckeye Institute has developed provides an
excellent starting point for those interested in improving the
performance of their local schools.
Matthew Carr is education policy director at the Buckeye Institute.
