Chatting about… why merit pay for teachers isn’t so easy.

Education time kids. Here in New Jersey, our new Governor has put a man in charge of the Department of Education who was an active opponent of it. Brett Schundler was in favor of charter schools, even opening one here in Hudson County.

It’s a school whose doors are now scheduled to close due to not meeting educational standards.

Whoops.

The buzzwords here in Jersey have been “merit pay”. Paying teachers in accordance with their student’s performances on standardized tests. Sounds great huh?

Unless you are my friend since college. We’ll call her Teacher X.

At the beginning of this year, Teacher X was called into her Principal’s office for a litle sit down chat. “Teacher X, ” said the Principal, “you really have to get your student’s test scores up.” He’s referencing the standardized test scores by which the state and Feds measure aptitude of students.

Teacher X was in shock. She’d just won teacher of the year in her school. She’d been recruited for her job by this very district and Principal due to the excellence with which she applies her education. Students and teachers in her town love and request her.  What was wrong with her student’s test scores?

Teacher X teaches special education.

Her students include those whose physical and/or mental challenges make it difficult to learn at the same schedule and in the same rhythm as their peers. This is why they’re placed into special ed in the first place. She’s taught kids with autism, bipolar disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, learning disabilities, you name it. She’s even had refugees in her class with no English and trauma therapy pasts.

And she’s taught them all.

Teacher X’s kids by definition aren’t going to test the same as kids without their challenges in their age group. This is no fault of the kids, their parents, or teacher X. They will test better than if they’d received no early services. But many of them will need additional supports for quite some time to meet their peer group’s testing thresholds.

If teachers are paid based upon their kids’ test scores, how is a good teacher like Teacher X paid? This is someone who purposely sought out the most challenging of students. She’d be punished for it, that’s how.

My teen is in the honors program at her school.  She had to test into it and apply at the grade school level to get in.  Should her teachers, (who already were assigned to the highest testers in the school) get paid more because they had the political pull to get into that program? Should they be paid more because she’s gifted and loves education and her parents have pushed it since she was a toddler? Heck, why don’t they cut me a check for making their job easy?

This is the point, merit pay sounds great on its face. It rewards those who have a greater output which benefits the company. BUt kids aren’t widgets. They aren’t coming out the same from the same mold. This is the problem, what about the kid who tanks their tests because they’re angry at the world or hate their teacher? What about the kid who aces it because they already came in gifted? And what happens to the kids who are trying their best with the talents God gave them but are still a little behind?

Merit pay as it is described now will encourage teachers and schools to seek out the kids who already can and abandon those who are want to learn but may be struggling. In the end, it’s the kids that lose out.

There has to be a better system, or a fair system in place before it’s across the board merit. If we want to pay teachers like we pay office workers, we’d better come up with a system where Teacher X isn’t abused and my smart kid isn’t used.