Where's the Merit in Merit Pay For Teachers? PDF Print E-mail
By Andy Waddell, Special to SantaCruzWire
SANTA CRUZ (December 2009) - Teachers take tests. In addition to all the exams I endured to get through college and acquire a master’s degree, I have taken the CBEST, the CLAD, the CSET, and probably a few others I have forgotten, sweating with a number two pencil in hand, and paying hundreds of dollars for the privilege, all in order to teach high school English.
Teachers give tests. We administer finals, read essay exams, proctor SATs, and enjoy the sadistic thrill of passing out pop quizzes. Although you run into the odd dreamer now and then who says, “those things are meaningless” and insists only on “authentic assessment,” most of us cannot conceive of education without the forced, timed exhibition of knowledge known as a test.
Why then are teachers so reluctant to be paid according to their students’ performance on a test?
The long-running movement to institute “merit pay” for teachers in California has gained momentum this year due to the “Race to the Top” program instituted by the Obama administration to “propel the transformational changes that students and teachers need” (U.S. Dept. of Education website). The strictures of the program preclude states that have laws forbidding using test scores for teacher evaluation from getting any of the money.   The governor, who came to office advocating merit pay, is advocating changing state law so we can get our hands on what may be as much as $700 million.
In a 2005 radio address Schwarzenegger compared the current situation to a computer salesman who sells the most computers and yet is paid the same as the other salesmen.  He said, “Everyone would agree that is unfair.” I’m sure most casual observers would agree and say that moving to “merit pay” is common sense.
The problem is in the details.
First, most people advocating the change have never even glanced at the test itself.  There are 106 different components of the California English Language Content Standards for ninth grade, resulting in a curriculum a “mile wide and an inch deep.” Of course, the test reflects this.  
Thus, in order to make sure that we teachers have covered standard 9RW1.3 (“Vocabulary and Concept Development: Identify Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology and use the knowledge to understand the origin and meaning of new words”) students are asked this question: “Which word is derived from the name of the nymph in Greek mythology who pined away for Narcissus until all that was left was her voice? A vocal B echo C larynx D articulate” (CDE website, Released Questions).  Students who correctly remember the story of Echo and Narcissus are deemed to have been taught this important concept.  Kudos to readers of Ovid!  My students, having studied Homer instead, might get: mercurial, hermetic, odyssey, polyphemus moth, martial, erotic, aphrodisiac, and many other words with mythological derivations, but unless they guess correctly, echo is going to leave them in the lurch.
More troubling is that most students who did know the answer probably never learned it in school at all. The story is included in numerous children’s mythology books that a parent might have purchased and read to a child. Among the literate, the topic might even have come up in conversation, an amusing tale to explain a phenomenon to a child. 
This brings up a second serious problem in using test scores to evaluate teacher effectiveness: the strong correlation between parental income and performance on standardized tests. Upper class parents tend to read to their children more.  Their children see them reading. They speak in complete sentences, in English. They use big words.  They are more likely to be watching the news than Jackass.  The cumulative effect of this is huge by the time students have reached high school.
This is not to say that the test is inaccurate in its portrayal of the upper class being better educated than the rest of us.  The kids at Beverly Hills High (API rank 10 out of 10) didn’t cheat on their exam – they really do know more than 90% of the students in the state.  Shouldn’t their teachers, then, be paid more than the rest of us for their excellent results?
Police in Beverly Hills must be excellent too, as the crime rate there is quite low.  Why should we pay policemen in Oakland as much when they produce such poor results: a much higher rate of violent crime?  Of course we don’t base police pay on crime rate because, as anyone can see, cops in Oakland are working harder, and possibly are more skilled, than BH police. Certainly, their services are more in need. Moreover, if we paid police according to crime statistics, they would flock to low-crime communities, leaving high-crime communities with no protection at all. 
Likewise, if we reward high test scores, schools with low scores will have an even harder time attracting and keeping quality teachers than they do already. Even in high-performing schools there would be problems.  Who would choose to teach English Learners, those kids new to the country?  Believe it or not, the 16-year-old who just arrived from Bolivia last year with only one year of schooling will take the same test (in English) as everyone else. Guess what?  He probably won’t do well. 
Then there’s the theory that we won’t reward the scores themselves, but the improvement in the scores from the previous year.  That sounds promising, but there are problems with that as well.  When I had a meeting with my supervisor to set up my evaluation for this year I was asked to bring my students’ test scores.  I made a chart comparing my last year’s 10th graders’ scores to their scores in 9th, 8th and 7th.  I was told that comparison was invalid because the tests are different.  They wanted me to compare last year’s 10th graders to the 10th graders from the previous year, despite the fact that they are different students!  Of course, we couldn’t discuss most of my last year’s students.  12th graders are not tested at all.
Teachers of seniors would, I assume, be ineligible for any rewards under a merit pay system.  In that regard they would be in the company of art, p.e., shop, music, and drama teachers. These subjects appear on no tests. On the other hand, one supposes they would be free from penalty if students score poorly, a trade-off many might choose since they have so little control over the outcome.
Critics often call these tests “high stakes” exams, but the more frightening aspect, for those of us whose income might depend on the results, is that for the students themselves they are absolutely “no stakes” exams.  Incredible as it may seem, these tests on which we freight the entire judgment of the quality of a school, district, or even an entire state, matter not one bit to the students actually taking them.  That doesn’t mean kids will necessarily sabotage the results; most do their best most of the time.  But think back to when you were 15.  Imagine you have four days of testing, the same type of testing you’ve been doing since third grade.  You know the result will not make the slightest difference in your grade or your ability to get into the college of your choice.  You know already that your score is likely to be close to identical to the scores you’ve received for eight years.  You know that when the bubbles are filled in, you can close the booklet and sleep.  It’s warm in the room.
And you know something else, if you’re 15 and you care about school.  If you’re the type who actually loves learning, the type who wants to join the world of the educated, the type who thinks about things.  If you’re that kid, and believe it or not they are legion, you know not only is this test not important to you at that moment, it never will be.  You know that it doesn’t test any of those things that are important to learning: curiosity, passion, novelty, wonder.  The reading selections are interest-free; the history is desiccated, with no connection to the modern day; the “writing” questions don’t ask you to write.
If you’re a good kid, you do your absolute best anyway.  If you’re a rebel, you amuse yourself by making patterns with the dots.  If you’re average, you read the question, give it some thought, then choose “B echo” - that has a ring to it.  Or A – vocal means voice and it says all that was left of her was her voice.  Or maybe C – didn’t I hear that C is usually right?
Andy Waddell, a Santa Cruz resident, teaches English at Santa Clara High School
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