The big problem with merit pay that people don’t seem to understand is that quality is not always valued in the public schools. In the private sector, it makes sense to pay a more productive employee more money because they make the company more money. But a good teacher doesn’t make the school system any more money. There’s not much incentive for a school system to pursue quality teachers. In many districts, if a ten year professional with two masters degrees comes up against a 23-year-old just out of college in the job market, the kid gets the job. Why would you trust these districts to properly evaluate and reward teachers on the basis of merit?

O’Bryant is a competitive entry math/science magnet – the students have already chosen to be there and competed to gain entry. This money is being given to the highest achieving students at a high achievement high school. Not to be cold, but if you’re in an AP class in a magnet school you are probably not the at risk youth we wring our hands about as a society. I’m not sure about O’Bryant, but AP classes were somewhat plum assignments in my high school. The kids care and work hard, teachers get to assign more advanced material. In Nashville, we are fighting to get the city to give merit pay to better teachers who stay in poorly performing schools. Here we see a corporation fighting to give the best teachers money to serve the best students – what problem is this solving? I’m not against teachers receiving merit pay, but this is not the type of merit pay structure I would want in my schools.

Under your plan, if I were to teach in a school made up mostly of the children of migrant farm workers (who themselves will often work in the same field as their parents) there is simply no way I would ever get a bonus. If I were to teach in a school made up mostly of the children of college professors, doctors, judges, and the like, so long as I were not a fall-down drunk, I would never fail to get a bonus.

The bonus system cannot overcome the huge disparities between schools. What is needed are systematic solutions for all schools, teachers, and students. Dangling a carrot that only a few teachers might hope to get solves nothing. What is needed is more teachers, who are better trained, with smaller student to teacher ratios, and adequate classroom support.

I know someone who helps build cruise missiles. They do not get bonuses, they get the best trained engineers with the best equipment in the best facilities and with the best support and so they build the best bombs. Individual engineers come and go but the system to designs these bombs is always the best. That is what we need in public education, a great system, not extra scraps for a few teachers.

One of the things they did wrong at my school was give bonuses to teachers who would transfer in, breeding resentment among longtime teachers (who in some cases were quite good). That’s basically the worst way to structure something like this. I’m not opposed to some kind of merit pay, I just think assigning it across the board – or worse, determining school budgets on that basis, as was done under Jeb – is nearly as bad as nothing. (That, and the FCAT was really a badly designed metric.) I’d oppose any kind of system based on NCLB on that basis, but like I said, I think (as I usually do) that your idea is generally good and the union in Boston is being shortsighted.

And there was at least one way that the union did make things worse for my school, insofar as I think they may have forced the hand of the superintendent in putting the entire staff’s contracts under review, which was likewise not helpful and only heightened suspicions that the teachers were being scapegoated (which to be honest I shared).

I disagree entirely, though I think you’re right to the extent that actually determining who the good teachers are can be very difficult.

My way of restructuring this would be to tie principal pay more directly to overall school performance, and then put the principals more directly in charge of merit pay for teachers. This way you have the incentives properly structured, and the actual decisions made at ground level. In the current system, of course, merit pay/bonuses are more difficult to properly distribute.

(P.S. I have taught, so I understand the difficulties facing teachers and with bonus pay. But I don’t share your overall view that it is impossible, only that we haven’t thought it through properly at this point.)

I have a rather unique perspective on education reform, having been the victim as a high school student of reform done very poorly. (I’d link you to a really great article about it, but it’s unfortunately behind a paywall.) I’m not saying the reforms weren’t necessesary – obviously most students were failing – but I think most of the blame was heaped by all on the older teachers and not of the district that had neglected us for decades. I remain convinced our principal should have been fired, and several of the teachers whose contracts were cancelled, kept.

Ridiculous as the idea is, part of me would love to see the students vote on who gets the bonuses. I suspect that would be more fair and provide a better assessment of who is actually deserving of them than either the union or the district.