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Rep. Gibson “Totally Against” Merit Pay; So Is Harvard Business Review

School Administrators of South Dakota exec John Pedersen continues his series of videos with movers and shakers in education with this January 20 interview with Rep. Peggy Gibson (D-22/Huron). Former superintendent Pedersen talks with former teacher Gibson about Governor Dennis Daugaard's proposed education reform package of selective merit bonuses, additional pay for all HS/MS math and science teachers, and ending "tenure":

Rep. Gibson says she is "totally against" the Governor's plan to give $5000 bonuses to the top 20% of teachers in each district. "How can you say... that 80% of the teachers are rotten teachers?" asks Rep. Gibson. She notes (as I have) that the Charlotte Danielson framework South Dakota plans to implement statewide stresses that tying teacher performance to pay "simply does not work." She says she's talked to many teachers and "they don't agree with it." She says the administrators she hears from see merit pay as "destroying" South Dakota's public education system. (Contrary to the Governor's claim that opinions are split among educators, I haven't heard a single teacher say "Whoo-hoo! Merit pay!" Mitchell superintendent Joe Graves is the only administrator I can think of who is warm to the proposal.)

Gibson also says Harvard Business Review has an article debunking the merit pay myth. Not Harvard Liberal Love and Basket-Weaving Review; Harvard Business Review.

Perhaps she is referring to this current article by a couple of econ and management profs:

Thanks mainly to provisions linked to performance, CEO compensation has skyrocketed in recent decades, while its correlation with actual corporate performance has remained as weak as ever.

...People subject to variable pay for performance don't passively accept the criteria. They spend a lot of time and energy trying to manipulate the criteria in their favor....

Variable pay for performance often leads employees to focus exclusively on areas covered by the criteria and neglect other important tasks....

Variable pay for performance tends to crowd out intrinsic motivation and thus the joy of fulfilling work. Such motivation is of great importance to business, because it supports innovation and encourages beyond-the-ordinary contributions....

Variable pay for performance, while it may seem attractive in theory, creates more problems than it solves. There's no proof that it helps achieve its intended purposes, and other approaches not only work better but also strengthen employee loyalty [Bruno S. Frey and Margit Osterloh, "Stop Tying Pay to Performance," Harvard Business Review, Jan/Feb 2012].

If we're trying to make education work more like business, then we need to learn the lessons of business and not throw money away on merit bonuses for an arbitrary quota of teachers. If Governor Daugaard really has $15,000,000 to invest in education (about a third of the $47 million he cut from state aid to education last year), we need to direct that money to initiatives that actually work.

Read More: California English teacher Larry Ferlazzo maintains this meaty list of articles explaining why teacher merit pay is a bad idea. He offers a good three dozen articles... which is three dozen articles more than I've heard the Governor or his people cite in support of their fatally flawed education reforms.

5 Comments

  1. Ryan 2012.01.25

    Corey,
    I assume you got your popcorn out last night to watch the state of the union so I'm curious about your response to his statement about rewarding our best teachers and being able to eliminate bad ones. Sounds like Arne Duncan has been spying on Governor Daugaard!

  2. Ryan 2012.01.25

    I see several articles out this morning talking about Obamas endorsement of merit pay

  3. Michael Black 2012.01.25

    Merit pay doesn't give you long term good results for teachers. A bad idea that wastes money is still a bad idea no matter who proposes it.

  4. caheidelberger Post author | 2012.01.25

    No popcorn here. I have no problem firing bad teachers. But on merit pay, our President, just like his former right-hand man Rahm Emanuel, is wrong.

  5. Ryan 2012.01.25

    Perhaps ALEC has infiltrated the Obama administration and we will see the corporate payoffs come through as campaign contributions!

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