Pay for Performance: the worst idea ever?

Our state and federal political leaders are invested in the idea of reforming education through accountability for results. There's nothing wrong there in theory, but the implementation is being distilled down to paying (and firing) teachers on the basis of test scores. Remember the axiom: you get what you measure. (Nor is every important result easy to measure.)

So, we’re in trouble in Michigan immediately. For three years, we have invested prodigious time and effort and millions of dollars in teacher training, curriculum writing, and hardware for the on-line Smarter Balanced Assessments set to replace the MEAP in the coming school year. All of this is based on the Common Core State Standards — for which implementation the legislature just denied funding.

So, will students be tested and teachers evaluated (as mandated by state law) on the basis of old tests that do not match the new curricula? What possible sense does that make?

And what is the point? Weren’t we trying to improve student learning?

We know from a robust and valid research base what works to improve teaching and learning: when teachers focus on analyzing, together, evidence of student learning, and when they hold one another collectively responsible for these outcomes, children achieve more. See ACSD’s “How Do Principals Really Improve Schools?” for numerous citations.

A collaborative culture of teaching professionals is the research-proven best practice that we should be encouraging. Instead, our ill-informed legislature keeps mandating practices proven not to work but to actually undermine that collaboration.

“Merit pay” or “pay for performance” does not work and puts teachers into competition with one another. There is NO research showing that it improves student performance or positively changes teacher behavior.

“Merit pay” makes things worse

But beyond absolutely not working, pay for performance makes thing worse. The “bigger stick” approach to improving instruction — by putting teachers’ pay and their very jobs in jeopardy — fosters fear and short-term thinking. Fear, competition, and short-term thinking prevent rather than encourage organizational improvement.

• Daniel Pink: in the MIT incentives study, “the high reward produced the worst performance. It has been proven over and over again by psychologists, sociologists, and economists [that] incentives work for simple, if-then tasks; but when tasks require some conceptual, creative thinking, straightforward rewards like money do not work and often lead to poorer performance.”

• W. Edwards Deming: merit pay “nourishes short-term performance, annihilates long-term planning, builds fear, demolishes teamwork, nourishes rivalry and politics.”

• Large corporations proved that the “bigger stick” is a bad idea by implementing it. Both IBM and Ford, some years ago, discovered that “forced ranking” employee evaluation systems destroyed the cooperation and collegiality necessary to efficient and effective operations.

When we set out to radically change the institution of public education, we should do so on the basis of valid research proving what actually works rather than our preconceived notions. We should carefully pilot and monitor changes so as not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. And we must always put the needs of our children over our ideology or the interests of those positioned to profit off them — such as testing and software corporations and for-profit school operators.

How about applying this to the legislature?

Regarding school districts in deficit, one of our legislators was recently quoted as insisting that “Someone must be held accountable!” Given that the legislature made unprecedented cuts in school funding and diverts $400 million a year from the School Aid Fund, I’d suggest that he look in the mirror.

Or, we could apply the same outcomes-based metrics to them. An editorial (“Teacher pay proposal flunks the test”) in The Livingston Daily recently suggested exactly that:

“Michigan lawmakers are among the highest paid in the nation, but the state doesn’t have the outcomes to justify those salaries…. Here’s a plan. Cut the pay of all lawmakers in half. Then, create a salary reward system based on quantitative improvements. A 10 percent pay hike, perhaps, if the Michigan unemployment rate dips below the national average. A similar sliding-scale reward when incomes rise. How about a bonus for lowering the number of residents living below the poverty level? Or improving the health status of Michigan residents?”

Or does such a suggestion insult and outrage them? Hmmm.

What motivates workers?

In the spring of 2009, I remember being infuriated by a Wall Street Journal article in which it was called “poetic justice” that the United Auto Workers would “finally have a direct stake in the survival and prosperity of General Motors and Chrysler.” The reporter was referring to the negotiated payments to the VEBA (voluntary employee beneficiary association) for UAW retiree health care being paid in stock rather than the agreed-upon cash, due to impending bankruptcy. I (not a UAW member nor a relative of one) found that opinion both stupid and insulting. In what way did auto workers not have a direct stake before? Their pay/pensions and benefits have always been dependent on the prosperity of the companies, and most of them held (now worthless) stock, as well — because they believe in and are proud of their work! When you are intimately involved in making tangible products that you, your friends, and your neighbors use every day, you are both literally and figuratively invested in their quality and in the success of the company. I think that personal stake is something not well understood by folks far removed from manufacturing. Pride is a powerful motivator.

What has this to do with education? It is now widely assumed that educators can be spurred to better performance by that universal motivational tool: money. The federal Race to the Top program of competitive grants specifically insists that teacher pay and job security be linked to performance — and that performance is to be measured largely by student performance on standardized tests. All over the country, teachers are being urged to give up tenure in favor of the possibility of much higher pay, should their charges’ test scores improve dramatically. The underlying rationale for this “pay for performance” is that teachers will thus be motivated to work harder at their jobs. This assumption, like the WSJ assumption that auto workers did not care about their companies or products, is also stupid and insulting. I cannot imagine that anyone goes into public school teaching for the money. The pay starts out low and, although it then doubles as experience and effectiveness increase, it also tops out at a relatively low ceiling given the level of responsibility and the number of degrees earned by most teachers.

No, teachers, I feel quite safe in generalizing, had less mercenary and more altruistic motives for going into their field. While it is possible that low pay can discourage and disaffect them, it does not logically follow that higher pay will energize and encourage them. Human motivation is simply not that one-dimensional. Once we get past a certain level of daily subsistence, we are much more satisfied by the intrinsic rewards of work — doing something well, making a real difference, growing in expertise, feeling useful and productive — than by how much we are paid for it. That is why so many materialistic Americans reach mid-life thinking “Is that all there is?” despite having reached their goals for acquiring all kinds of expensive stuff. The notion that more money will result in better teaching is insulting because it assumes teachers are both lazy and materialistic.

And now it has been proven wrong, as well.

The National Center for Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University (funded by a $10M grant from the U.S. Dept. of Education) employs “specialists in social and behavioral science, statistical analysis, economic theory, and policy analysis” to conduct “randomized field trials and evaluations of existing pay-for-performance programs” in public education. The report on one such study, the Project on Incentives in Teaching, or POINT, was released last week. This five-year study and analysis of a three-year randomized trial examined the effects on student outcomes of paying eligible Nashville teachers bonuses of up to $15,000 per year for increasing their students’ scores on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program tests.

The bottom line? “We sought a clean test of the basic proposition: If teachers know they will be rewarded for an increase in their students’ test scores, will test scores go up? We found that the answer to that question is no.”

This does not mean that teachers should not be paid more, but it should cause us to reconsider the simplistic pay-for-test-scores plans. If we really want to apply business principles to the improvement of public education, we should go back to W. Edwards Deming, who considered pay for performance one of the “Seven Deadly Diseases.” Instead, Deming suggests a continuous cycle of collaborative planning, implementation, evaluation of results, and adaptation of the plan in order to truly change an organization. And, imagine what being treated like professionals in this way would do for teacher morale and motivation!

May 2011 addition: you have got to see this animation summarizing Dan Pink’s Drive work on motivation and incentives!