Veldhuis and Merit Pay

On this past Wednesday’s show of BC Almanac, Niels Veldhuis from the Fraser Institute was the guest and he was speaking about merit pay for teachers (if the CBC link is broken, leave a comment and I can probably post a new link). Once again I was infuriated by the Fraser Institute’s interest in this topic. There are so many flaws with the argument that it makes my head spin. I think Veldhuis’ main points were as follows:

1. Research shows that merit pay works

2. 13 of the 28 most developed countries have some type of merit pay

3. Experience and teacher education don’t improve teachers but monetary incentives do

4. The BCTF is asking for unreasonable salary demands

5. Merit pay is about the kids, not money

While I can’t offer details on all of Veldhuis’ comments, I think it easy enough to give some strong opposing views. I also recognize that Veldhuis didn’t have time to go into detail on all of his points. Nevertheless, he brought it up so he should answer to it.

Veldhuis says that research shows that merit pay works. I’ve also read many times that research shows that merit pay doesn’t work. The devil would be in the details, as they say. What is “works”? Typically it is standardized tests that are referenced in terms of student success, and it is this success that is often cited as being the determinant of teacher success. Veldhuis said that we should experiment and find out what works for evaluations, such different testing methods or teacher/administrator collaborative evaluation. I think I counted Veldhuis reference 7 different evaluation methods and six of them were some type of testing of students. I would argue that Veldhuis doesn’t have as many different ideas on how to rate teachers as he implies: a test is a test. This leads to one of the biggest criticisms of merit pay: does it make sense to use student test scores as a means for evaluating a teacher? In BC the answer is clearly “no,” for several reasons.  There are resource problems, where students with IEPs (special needs) are often concentrated into single classrooms in order to make more efficient use of special assistants. It stands to reason that these classes would almost always have lower average test scores than other classes, which would reflect poorly on a teacher’s merit. Furthermore, it is reasonably common for a teacher to have some classes with average marks significantly higher or lower than their other classes. Personalized learning, as promoted by the BC government, educators and 21st Century Learning tells us that different kids should have different paths to their goals, and I see this as being a reflection on what we can expect from different students and classrooms. We can expect a diversity of results in different classes and this shouldn’t reflect poorly on teachers. If you are a teacher that by chance has a workload with more classes of struggling students, it shouldn’t affect your merit. To show this diversity, I can give an example. This past year I had took over three physics 11 classes. One class had a few students that skipped quite a bit because they weren’t concerned about marks, knowing that they were going to cruise to a pass with a 65%. Another class had 4 honor roll students. The average marks for the two classes were significantly different. If a merit pay system was relying on test scores, does this mean that my potential for merit pay is greatly dependent upon luck with the students that I happen to get?

As for teacher/administrator evaluations, while I agree and like the idea of evaluation and input to teaching, I don’t agree with using such a subjective point of view for determining pay.  Personal conflicts, poor management, nepotism and a host of other issues can easily lead to unfair and contentious merit pay settlements, which would do nothing to improve children’s learning and would likely be detrimental for morale.

I was listening to Veldhuis speak while in my van with my friend Steve, who has first-hand experience with merit pay. Steve began his teaching career in California. He laughed at Veldhuis’ suggestions, saying that he went through this while in California. The desire for good test results meant that Steve got good at teaching the kids how to do well on a test, and that this occurred without necessarily any benefit to their actual learning [Steve, if you read this please feel free to correct me if I got this wrong].

Finally, I think an argument can be made that standardized tests are not only poor test instruments, but can also be considered unethical. I’m not against standardized tests all together, as I think educators can use their feedback to help with many different things; however, I think that all standardized tests need to be low stakes and I don’t think this would happen for judgement of merit. Certainly it wouldn’t seem fair to students to write a standardized test simply to find out if their teacher should get a bonus payment!

Veldhuis mentioned several times that 13 of the world’s 28 most developed countries had some type of merit pay for teachers. This is a meaningless statistic to me, as there is no significance or valuation in it. If any one can convincingly explain why this stat is a larger endorsement than “15 of the world’s 28 most developed countries don’t have any type of merit pay for teachers,” I sure would like to hear it.

I think that one of Veldhuis’ weakest arguments is that teachers don’t improve with experience or education. This refers to the fact that teachers get a pay raise every year for ten years (experience) and they get pay raises for completing a masters degree or PhD (education). Instead, Veldhuis says that teachers improve by offering money incentives. First of all, I believe that research has shown that money is in fact a poor motivator. It is reasonable to think that the teachers that are most motivated by money would also be the ones that would do the most to get merit pay, even if their actions were detrimental to their students. More importantly, what Veldhuis describes is an explanation of motivation. He doesn’t explain how teachers actually improve. He does tell us that it isn’t through experience or education (which makes me wonder why Veldhuis bothered to get a masters in economics, or if he has ever bothered to put it on his cv). So exactly how does a teacher improve? Do they click their heels three times and say, “I know I can, I know I can”? Do they just need to try harder? I think this is what most people think - that lots of teachers just don’t try hard. That’s a pretty insulting way of looking at it.

Veldhuis compares teachers to the “real world” at times, and I have some news for him. In the real world, people are given salaries according to their experience and education. One of the best ways to get a salary increase in the private sector is to switch jobs. You take your experience and education and get a new job with the appropriate wages. Past evaluations from former employees are almost never part of the equation. I was an engineer for 15 years and involved in hiring other engineers, I know how this works. I would like to see Veldhuis hire someone with a PhD and give them the same salary as someone with a bachelors. I’m sure that would go over really well.

Veldhuis also mentioned how the BCTF is asking for unreasonable salary demands in the current contract negotiations. I don’t think I’ve seen anything unreasonable in these demands, especially compared to the government’s stance of zero wage increase and not even keeping up with inflation. This leads to my last point, which is Veldhuis’ motivation. Is this really all about his concern for children’s education? Because he certainly gave the impression that tax payer’s money is a prime concern of his. If Veldhuis was really concerned about education, I suggest that he instead makes pitches for increasing the number of SEA (special education assistants) available in each classroom, or something else of similar benefits. I truly don’t think that Veldhuis’ arguments hold much water and find it a bit strange that he would believe them himself. Canada has a pretty darn good education system. Why not concentrate on improving things that make day to day differences in children’s education, instead of American style fascination with merit pay and standardized testing? How about getting more computers in schools, surely we can all agree that would be beneficial? How about more support for kids with learning disabilities, or offering more time for professional development? How about making it easier for teachers to take their classes out for field trips and experiential learning? How about innovative ideas such as bringing collaborative assessment teams into schools so we can concentrate on assessment FOR learning rather than assessment of learning (aka the beloved standardized test which does the not-so important job of ranking schools and determining bonuses).

In many ways I’m not actually too bothered by the pure idea of merit pay.  I think there is a very good chance that I would benefit from it.  However, the implementation of merit pay is very troublesome and the true reasons for it are mysterious and disturbing.  I don’t see similar public calls for merit pay for nurses, doctors, lawyers, bankers, accountants, civil servants, etc.  What is so special about teachers?  Why is there such a great distrust in the day to day work of the average teacher?  Why are we so worried about a bad teacher, but bad investment bankers are accepted as part of our capitalist system?  I recommend that Veldhuis spend more time researching these questions, I think it would be a far more productive use of his time.