Over the last few days, several school districts including the Pittsburgh Public Schools (PA), Omaha (NE), and Hillsborough (FL) have been salivating over getting grant money from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to improve schools. They are using the good old method of incentives. They are trying out the idea of merit pay since their foray into funding charter schools didn't work as well as hoped. They are trying the idea out in charter schools in California as well. This does beg the question: Will providing merit be the answer to education's ills?
If Gates is correct on this matter, it will imply that the carrot (merit pay) will alter teacher performance and therefore, student performance. Will the promise of merit pay change the way teachers approach their jobs? In Hillsborough, they are training 200 "master teachers" to give evaluations to their peers and a person's pay could be determined by the evaluation. Thirty percent of a teacher's evaluation will be done by the master teacher and principal evaluation and test scores will apparently be figured into the equation. A novel idea will allow teachers to "jump up" in the salary schedule based on the outcomes of the evaluation and student performances. People can jump up on the salary schedule and earn a lot more money. I wonder if this change in status is permanent or year-to-year? In any case, it allows teachers to make more money.
The thing that makes this interesting is that success will mean that teachers were "dogging it." This program, apparently, is based purely on market incentives. There is some element of the Hawthorne effect in play here, so test scores might be increased due higher levels of attention and appreciation for what teachers do (by the evaluators), but over the course of a year, such effects shouldn't be that great. If nothing else changes (lessons, curriculum, books, facilities), the factor measured will be the incentive offered to teachers. If successful, what this study would imply is that teachers could do more, but are not. If paid better, they would try harder to teach the students.
The implications are that the free market will change education. The Gates Foundation has tried to demonstrate the power of free market forces in charter schools, and having (at best) mixed results there, has elected to try anther free market idea - cash incentives. This is an effort to get teachers to somehow teach harder. Somehow, the quest for gold will change how the teacher approaches his or her job, and they will be better teachers. In some ways, this is like the Cash for Clunkers program that allows people to trade in their old cars to stimulate the economy and clean the air. Here, The Gates Foundation is giving the money and keeping the same teachers. If Gates has it right, then the teachers could have done a better job teaching the students, but didn't due to the lack of a financial incentive. Most taxpayers and parents will not like the idea that teachers were mailing in their effort if scores increase a great deal.
Dr. Edward Deming was a management guru who said that people who worked in a well managed system did a good job. It isn't about the money, but the system. The Gates Foundation is giving the idea of cash incentives a try. The government enacted "Cash for Clunkers" to stimulate auto spending and reduce pollution. The incentives of the program were clear; a clear exchange. The stimulous programs offered to teachers imply that teachers are not doing their best. It is amazing that Bill Gates, who said the problem with public education is "the system" seems totally clueless about how to approach the problem.
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