President Barack Obama is currently touting the benefits of pay-for-performance compensation for teachers. Someone needs to slap him upside the head. Get ahold of yourself Barack!
As W. E. Deming often said, “By what measure?”
Pay for performance always creates perverse incentives for the simple reason that it is impossible to maximize one measure, or even some limited set of measures, without destroying the system. We can define dereliction of duty in some gross terms, but we cannot define excellence.
Pay-for-performance in the financial sector resulted in paying outrageous bonuses to wiz-kids and executives who did whatever it took to maximize profits. To our everlasting shame, they acted accordingly by producing profits…AT ANY COST TO THE SYSTEM! Now the world is paying the price for pay-for-performance. Should we do the same in the education of our children?
Barack, what measures will you use to evaluate the performance of teachers?
- If you use student test scores, teachers will teach students how to beat tests.
- If you use peer evaluations, teachers will butter up their colleagues.
- If you use student evaluations, teachers will soft peddle students.
- If you use parent evaluations, teachers will pander to the parents.
- If you use administrator evaluations, teachers will grovel before administrators.
A school is a system. A well led school will be one in which everyone understands the job to be done and methods for getting that job done. The school’s greatest asset will be the diversity of individuals who contribute to the overall success of the mission. Some will rank better by one measure. Some by another. When mission and methods are clear, teachers will teach. Everyone in the system will do their very best. Why would they do otherwise?
As has been the case with our financial industry, paying teachers for performance will guarantee disaster by maximizing the outcomes we measure, and destroying the system overall. Instead of pay-for-performance, substitute leadership that understands the educational mission and methods, and leads the system of students, teachers, administrators, and community in an educational enterprise that produces diverse, competent, and innovative citizens who can tackle the challenges of the 21st Century.
PS – Also consider how this applies to pay-for-performance in the health care sector!
