A study by Harvard economist Ronald
Fryer has concluded that the $75 million experiment in merit pay for
New York City public school teachers, launched in 2007, had no
significant impact on student achievement in the schools where it was
implemented.
First with donations from private
funders, then with public money, the program offered bonuses to
schools that showed improvement on their school report cards. Report
cards measure student performance on state tests as well as student,
parent and teacher responses to the citywide school survey.
The schools were awarded $3,000 per
teacher if they were able to fully meet their targeted goals for
improvement, and $1,500 per teacher for showing 75 percent
improvement. More than 80 percent of the schools that were
eligible for bonuses distributed the cash evenly among teachers
although it was not required to do so.
The idea of “merit pay” comes
straight from the corporate world, and is based on the assumption
that teachers will work harder and therefore improve their students’
levels of achievement if they are given an economic incentive. The
idea is that teachers can be motivated with the promise of financial
reward, the same way a salesman can be motivated by the promise of a
commission.
Opening up state laws to allow for
merit pay in the future was one of the key steps for states to become
eligible for federal Race to the Top funding last year. Merit
pay has been strongly pushed by the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and other corporate backers
of the education “reform” movement. Teachers’ unions have
generally resisted measures to tie teachers’ pay to test scores,
but in several districts have agreed to experimental programs like
the one in New York.
In New York City, Fryer found that
the program had a “negligible” affect on attendance, behavior,
high school Regents exam scores and graduation rates, while having a
significantly negative impact on middle school students’ math and
English test scores.
This study indicates that corporate
ideas of competition and financial incentive do not apply to the
world of education, and even have a harmful effect on children’s
learning. It is up to school communities to organize and take the
lead in demanding that parents, students and teachers, not corporate
CEOs, determine what is best for children
