Incentives versus Rewards

Daniel Pink, profiled in a recent Washington Post article and author of the book “Drive,” claims that merit pay and pay for performance programs for teachers will not work.  According to Pink’s book, jobs that involve simple straightforward tasks respond well to rewards, but those that involve judgment and creativity do not.  Pink argues that teaching falls into the latter category.   A recent study of a pay-for-performance system in Nashville, conducted by Vanderbilt University, seems to support Pink’s premise.  The study examined teachers in Nashville schools who were offered bonuses of as much as $15,000 to improve student achievement and found that student test scores for these teachers were no better than for teachers that did not get merit pay.

What the article fails to address, is that merit pay and pay-for-performance systems actually address two different issues in the teaching profession.  Pay-for-performance, as a means to incentivize teachers to work harder and produce higher student achievement is different from the idea of merit pay as a reward for great teaching.  Proponents of merit pay such as former DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee point out that it is about “retaining high performers not inspiring mediocre teachers.”  Others claim that this is an important step to helping create a professional culture of high expectations and high performers. 

The new Baltimore Professional Practices and Student Learning Program (BPPSLP), which abolished the traditional step seniority increases and replaced it with a merit based system, has to improve student learning by January 2013 or the contract could revert back to the old system.  So the question that comes to mind: Is Baltimore measuring success by the most appropriate standard?  Should the point of the new pay system be increasing student achievement or retaining more educators?  And if you are a teacher does the new pay system matter as much in the stay or go decision-making process as the quality of professional development or the support of a good principal?  As Baltimore pushes forward in its merit pay reforms, one can only hope that the district is giving equal consideration to other critical factors that influence teacher retention.