Performance Pay for Teachers: The Standards Movement's Last Stand?

Of all the consequences of the standards movement, pay-by-performance will be the most destructive: of education, of teachers' careers, of students' opportunities, Mr. Holt warns. The U.S. would be unwise to ignore the lessons of history.

By Maurice Holt

DESPITE THE support of Congress, a compliant press, and the relentless creation of targets, tests, and benchmarks, it looks as if the Great Standards Project is faltering. Not a single one of the goals set for the year 2000 is within sight. The results of state tests only confirm what we already knew: schools do well in leafy suburbs and badly in East Saint Louis. And perhaps most significant of all, the latest Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup survey of public attitudes showed solid public backing for a balanced curriculum, assessment based on classroom performance rather than on tests, and improvement to the existing system rather than the continuing rhetoric of reform.1

But if the standards movement is faltering, it certainly isn't foundering. Having done their best to demoralize schools and give the phrase "testing to destruction" a new meaning, there's one last aspect of civilized education that the Standardistos have in their sights: the sense of trust and cooperation among teachers. At the third National Education Summit in 1999, the assembled governors and business leaders resolved to set up a system of "rewards and consequences" for teachers -- "competitive salary structures" that will tie teacher salaries to student achievement and "provide salary credit for professional development only when it is standards-based."2

It is a desperate measure, but it has strong bipartisan support and the fervent attention of corporate America. Business leaders "will help interested school systems . . . incorporate pay-for-performance incentive plans into their salary structures, based on lessons learned from the private sector." But there's the fatal flaw. Research shows that the main lesson to be learned from business experience with merit pay is that it doesn't work. In fact, it does more harm than good.3 As Philip Slater concludes, "Using money as a motivator leads to a progressive degradation in the quality of everything produced."4

Standards-based education and performance-based pay raise two connected issues: the nature of a system and the significance of a performance. The true believers in merit pay assume that the educational transaction is a simple interaction between student and teacher. Improving it is thus a matter of jolting the student (by such threats as no social promotion) and reconstructing the teacher (by encouraging the acquisition of new "skills" -- a slippery word that appears to solve all problems but only raises new ones).

It's an attractive exercise in reductionism, but it doesn't ring true. Students and teachers are only two elements in a much wider scheme of things. The response of students can depend on whether they ate breakfast, whether they are bullied in the hallways, whether they play on a school team. Whatever the students' innate capacity, these factors will influence the way they perform. The performance of teachers will depend on the time available for preparation, their sense of ownership of the subject matter, the tone of the class and of the school, and their understanding of curriculum in its broadest sense.

In short, when we measure student performance, we are measuring the response not of an isolated individual but of the system at that moment as it impinges on the student. Similarly, the teacher is not an isolated player but stands at the sharp end of a system that stretches from the principal to the school board and beyond. The comparative assessment of merit, whether of student or teacher, is inherently subjective and unreliable.5

It follows that any proposal to link pay to a performance-based audit deserves the utmost attention, and the scheme recently advanced by Allan Odden and Carolyn Kelley falls into this category.6 They argue that "compensation can influence teacher motivation and behavior," and Odden, who directs the Teacher Compensation Project at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, advocates "a new compensation structure" that will use pay to motivate teachers, based on "knowledge and skills and performance incentives."7 Odden states that the existing salary schedule, based on teachers' experience and qualifications, is "always under attack." He concedes that merit pay has a poor track record but claims that, by basing his scheme on knowledge, skills, and performance, he avoids this difficulty.8 He points out that instruments have recently been devised for assessing these indicators, and he argues that by using them his scheme "can help strengthen teaching as a profession and can support standards-based education reform."9

These claims require scrutiny. There is scant evidence to suggest that the existing pay scheme is "always under attack." Indeed, given that there has never been a time in the last century when some aspect of American schooling was not under attack from one quarter or another, pay scales seem to have lived a charmed life. Odden notes that experience-based pay was criticized in two recent Kappan articles, but one of these was written by a self-confessed "Right-Wing Extremist."10

The reality is that a sustained attack on current teacher compensation has emerged only recently, from the 1999 National Education Summit, with its demand for "performance pay for teachers," and it is this demand that Odden's scheme is explicitly tailored to meet.11 If we seek the views of the American public on pay for teachers, though, we get a very different picture. When the 2000 edition of the Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll asked how closely teacher salaries should be tied to student achievement, a bare 25% of the public said "very closely," while 24% said "not at all." Only 35% said "somewhat" -- scarcely a ringing endorsement of merit pay.12

Equally unconvincing is Odden's belief that a scheme that is based on "the key concept . . . that teachers earn increases in pay on the basis of demonstrated acquisition and use of specific knowledge and skills" is not merit pay.13 Any attempt to differentiate between teachers by means of an audit of their professional knowledge and skills is an attempt to determine merit. To assert otherwise seems bizarre. If these numerical measures are used to determine pay, then they generate a destructive force that sets teachers against one another and ultimately imposes the culture of the audit upon the culture of teaching. As Michael Power observes, "Organizations must be changed to make them auditable."14

Audits beget conformity to the norms specified in the merit rubric, forcing both students and teachers to survive by going through the required motions. The signs are already evident: excitement gives way to convention, as students crank out the mechanical responses dictated by tests -- tests that trivialize education, as Susan Ohanian has demonstrated.15 It's a remarkable irony that the 1999 National Education Summit, proclaiming the determination of corporate America to link everything in schools to the dogma of standards for the sake of the economy, imposes on teachers the same rigidity -- and distrust of anything that fosters independent thought and personal growth -- that characterized central planning in the former Soviet Union and ultimately brought about its collapse. The summit's "Action Statement" repeatedly refers to "alignment." As Barbara Miner reported, the need is for "curriculum and assessment aligned with standards" and for professional development programs that must be "aligned with state standards and tests."16 The message is clear and Stalinist in tone: deviations will not be tolerated.

The Odden plan is not just a paper tiger. It is the centerpiece of an approach to teacher pay that is espoused by the Teacher Union Reform Network.17 Currently, several cities have groups that accept "the underlying principle of a school-based performance award program."18 The foundation of this program in merit pay is clear: "Some incentive, typically monetary, is granted to a school or to individual teachers if specified performance goals or improvement gains are met."19

Odden and Kelley argue that "education needs a dramatic new pay system" and that benchmarking -- "visiting other school districts and organizations to learn about processes, strategies and compensation structures" -- is "an important research task critical to the teacher compensation process."20 Odden has proposed no fewer than 13 "professional benchmarks" that teachers must negotiate in the first seven years of their professional lives.21

Each benchmark corresponds to a series of tests, written or practical, identifying various "key aspects," "competencies," and "domains." Atomism of this sort may be helpful in analyzing a procedural task, such as plowing a field or assembling furniture, but applying it to activities as complex and obscure as teaching and learning is futile. It defines education by its outcomes, neglecting the crucial role of teachers in apprehending and animating the educational encounter, in getting the student "to make the most of himself by teaching him to recognize himself in the mirror of the human achievements which compose his inheritance."22 This activity of the teacher owes everything to process and nothing to benchmarks: "It is implanted unobtrusively in the manner in which information is conveyed, in a tone of voice, in the gesture which accompanies instruction, in asides and oblique utterances, and by example."23

If benchmarks were to be defined at the federal level, it would be logical for states and colleges to base their promotional structures and inservice training courses on them. Significantly, Odden proposes that the apparatus established by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards could be a source of tests and exercises. Centralist control of teachers' careers would certainly reinforce Alfie Kohn's observation that "a top-down, heavy-handed, corporate-style, test-driven approach to school reform . . . is squeezing the intellectual life out of our schools."24

IN THE LIGHT of these reservations, the popularity of Odden's proposals with the British government is of some significance. A scheme for "performance-related pay" (PRP), for which Odden was a consultant, was foisted on British schools in September 2000 as part of the central control of British education at all levels. This process of centralizing began with the enforcement of a "national curriculum" for schools in 1988, continued with the introduction of a "Research Assessment Exercise" (RAE) for universities in the 1990s, and has been vigorously extended by the new Labour government since 1997. The views of teachers have largely been excluded from this process, so much so that the 1988 national curriculum proved to be unworkable and had to be modified some years later at great cost.

As always, the law of unintended consequences applies. Because universities in Britain are audited and funded in proportion to the number of research papers they generate, the appeal of university careers has greatly diminished, and the standard of both teaching and research has been lowered. As Power concludes, the effect of the RAE has been "to create incentives to teach less and write more. . . . [I]t has been argued that the RAE is in fact a 'fatal remedy.' . . . Editing books, organizing conferences and, paradoxically, reviewing and facilitating the publications efforts of others fall out of account."25 In the schools, paperwork has increased as more and more tests -- tied to the standards enshrined in the national curriculum -- have borne down upon teachers. Morale is low, and recruitment is falling. Some schools can operate for only four days a week.

The announcement of the PRP proposal elicited severe criticism from the Secondary Heads' Association, to which most high school heads (i.e., principals) and deputies in the U.K. belong. The government depends on the heads to make the scheme work; they must audit every teacher annually against agreed targets and Odden-style benchmarks. Moreover, the government is mustering an army of external assessors (in addition to the school inspectors already in place) to audit the audits of the heads. Add to this the possibility that teachers will appeal their assessments, and the scale of the operation quickly becomes absurd. But the heads' objections are unlikely to be heeded, for the U.K. still works on the principle of the "Crown-in-Parliament" that the 13 American colonies found so distasteful in 1765. That is, the government of the day wields supreme power; with a working majority, prime ministers can propose and dispose as they wish, almost as arbitrarily as George III once did. And for the last 20 years or so, the education system has been regarded as a test bed for doctrinaire politics.

That the Odden proposals find favor in such a centralist state as the U.K. ought to set alarm bells ringing in U.S. schools, not least because the adoption of PRP reflects -- among other influences -- the British government's commitment to a system of administration termed "New Public Management" (NPM). Power summarizes NPM as a "cluster of ideas borrowed from . . . private sector administrative practice" that emerged in the U.S. during the 1980s.26 NPM stems, in Power's view, from "a desire to replace the presumed inefficiency of hierarchical bureaucracy with the presumed efficiency of markets."27 In terms of NPM, a U.S. school district is a hierarchical bureaucracy. It is better, therefore, to devise ways of determining the performance of students in all schools on a common basis and then, by publishing a rank order, establish a market that will ensure the survival of the fittest. And so it has come to pass.

Reforms in the U.S. health-care system have proceeded along similar lines and were applied to the U.K.'s National Health Service during the early 1990s. An internal market was established, so that the hospitals, as providers of health care, compete for the favors of doctors as purchasers. The result has been a vast increase in managers and accountants and an alarming decrease in the availability of hospital treatment.

Another aspect of NPM is the "control of control," and the duplicated levels of auditing of PRP in the U.K. illustrate this vividly. School principals are to control teachers by an annual audit, and they in turn are controlled by government-appointed regulators. The same goes for schools in the U.S. subject to state standards; principals control schools through tests and targets -- the hard currency of schooling, certified at state level. Thus NPM performs a useful conjuring trick. By stipulating outcomes at the school level, it conveniently moves accountability away from politicians and administrators, who invent and control the system, to those who actually do the work.

Support for the standards movement, with its audits and benchmarks, owes much to this managerial concept -- a fact that helps explain the bipartisan enthusiasm for standards. For Republicans, NPM creates markets and gives value for money; business likes the emphasis on unbridled competition; Democrats see the concept as more open and fair, a combination of top-down and bottom-up. Hence, for example, the eager adoption by the Clinton Administration of the 1992 publication Reinventing Government, which Power views as "something of an NPM bible."28

In practice, though, NPM doesn't fulfill its promise. Markets don't function in the way textbooks suppose; people don't conform to behaviorist principles (teachers, for example, do not see money as their prime motivator); and, if NPM is to work, it requires measurable ways of auditing outcomes along with evaluators who are external to the real activity. Far from reducing hierarchies, NPM creates new ones that have more power. In the U.K., as Richard Pring points out, "Arrangements previously devised to support market choice are now employed to ensure greater management control and manipulation by government."29 And importing the language of business and commerce into education leads to "an impoverished vocabulary for that transaction between teacher and learner."30

New Public Management, which has spawned this revival of performance-based pay, is fundamentally about separating ends and means; this is true of any ends-driven program. Teachers are merely one of the means; they are "human resources," transferable between schools and defined not by their humanity but by the number of benchmarks they have been measured against. But the engagement between teaching and learning is problematic, invoking methods that depend entirely on interactions between ends and means. As William Reid puts it, "Each step is contingent on preceding steps: at each moment, method and subject matter interact. At every point the use of method is subject to the judgment of individuals, and only retrospectively can its course be charted because its logic is continuously reconstructed as it interacts with its subject matter."31

The interaction of ends and means within an institution -- whether a business or a school -- is favored by a culture of conversation and collaboration. In a school, teachers would share ownership of the curriculum with other stakeholders, and graduation would acknowledge the unique contributions of students as individuals rather than as the disembodied consumers of tests. Team strategies within schools are essential in building a curriculum of this kind, and they depend on trust and respect in a community of professionals. Unfortunately, merit pay is team poison.32

New Public Management is unsuitable for any form of activity in which the engagement depends on deliberative judgment rather than on procedures derived purely from ends. This fact is implicit in the work of the business consultant W. Edwards Deming, who recognized that trying to improve a business by focusing on outcomes -- management by objectives and all its kin -- was doomed to failure. Neither can the system be understood by its response to the market or by choosing "best practices" or "what works" -- both prominent in NPM. Improvement depends on understanding process, not on blaming the worker. As Will Hutton writes, "At the heart of Deming's position was the understanding that the nature of work is fundamentally different from the way it is conceived in the free market tradition."33 It should come as no surprise that Deming, whose ideas have revitalized many U.S. businesses, abominated merit pay in all its forms. He regarded any system for appraising and rewarding merit as "the most powerful inhibitor to quality and productivity in the Western World."34

Merit pay is easy to adopt but almost impossible to dislodge, as the British discovered when, in 1862, "payment by results" was applied to elementary schools in order to reduce costs and improve efficiency. Despite many complaints from Her Majesty's Inspectors of Schools, it lasted until 1895. At its demise, a chief inspector was moved to write: "Having for 33 years deprived the teachers of almost every vestige of freedom, the Department [of Education] suddenly reversed its policy and gave them . . . the boon which it had long withheld."35 Of all the consequences of the standards movement, pay-by-performance will be the most destructive: of education, of teachers' careers, of students' opportunities. The U.S. would be unwise to ignore the lessons of history.

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Last updated 18 January 2002
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