Bryant should tread with care on teacher merit pay proposal

Editorials

August 9, 2012

Bryant should tread with care on teacher merit pay proposal

By Anthony Hales Jr./Guest columnist The Picayune Item Picayune Item Thu Aug 09, 2012, 08:01 AM CDT

POPLARVILLE — This past week at the Neshoba County Fair, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant joined a growing chorus of supporters around the country and voiced his support for merit pay for teachers. Gov. Bryant proclaimed that the popular measure, which links pay raises and bonuses to the performance of students on standardized test and other academic measures, would prevent principals from rewarding their favorite employees with pay raises and instead reward the state’s most effective teachers. Bryant’s statements were reasonable and pass the logical smell test, but it is important that this issue be thoroughly debated and vetted before moving forward.

Made famous in part by Michelle Rhee’s highly publicized reforms in the Washington D.C, the concept of merit pay for teachers has found a wide array of support across the political spectrum while drawing fierce opposition from many within the teaching ranks and other education advocates. One of the few concepts to find a significant amount of bi-partisan support in today’s polarized environment, merit pay has been embraced as a market-based solution for public education by conservatives and is a central theme of the Obama administration’s K-12 education agenda. The basic argument is that the most effective and efficient teachers often leave the teaching ranks within a few years for higher paying fields because they feel unrewarded for their hard work and that merit pay encourages them to stay in the field by acknowledging their accomplishments. However, the merit pay concept has a fair share of detractors within the education community and is staunchly opposed by the National Education Association. A study by Vanderbilt University’s National Center on Performance Incentives found no significant link between the use of teacher bonuses and student performance and famed author and expert on motivation, Daniel Pink, recently took to the pages of the Washington Post to speak out against it. Advocates of merit pay are quick to point out that the studies and critics routinely focus simply on test scores and fail to mention the retention of highly effective teachers under the system.

While there is a case to be made that Mississippi may benefit from some form of merit pay, the questions surrounding implementation and funding must be resolved in a transparent and rational manner. Many of our best and brightest students leave the state after finishing college in order to find employment in more affluent areas of the country and potential earnings sometimes play a role in their decision. A valid merit pay system may persuade some of these young men and women, who have a genuine interest in teaching but are turned off by the relative low pay, into entering the classroom in their home state. It may even entice some “effective” teachers who love the craft but desire a higher income into staying the course. However, the question remains if the state has a problem with teacher retention. This question is particularly relevant in a state lacking a true major hub for white collar jobs. Also, the question of how already cash-strapped school districts will be able to afford a merit pay system has to be resolved. Finally, the criteria used to determine who is an effective teacher should be developed with extensive stakeholder input and account for teachers working in high-need, high poverty schools.

As I stated earlier, the purpose of this is not to oppose or promote the use of merit pay in Mississippi, those debates will undoubtedly happen at the local level and within the state legislature. The purpose is to encourage that any consideration of this policy be done in the spirit of good governance and only after rigorous discussion of possible consequences. In this age of political polarization, we too often see sound policy fall victim to political games and I believe that this issue is too important to Mississippi’s future for rational decision making to take a back seat to ideology and rhetoric.

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