A Neat Thought on Merit Pay

There's a great letter in the most recent edition of Edweek talking about merit pay. The part that struck me most was this:

First, in the private sector, merit can fund its own reward: It increases the firm’s revenue. But in public schools, merit does not generate additional revenue, except over the long term and very diffusely, through increased property values to tax. Moreover, teachers recognize that they are competing for a piece of a fixed pool of merit money, which discourages cooperation and mentoring.

I'd never thought of it that way before, but it seems true. If you're in sales, your "merit pay" can be earned off of a demonstrated increase in sales, or the profits your invention made, or what you saved the company by increasing efficiency. Putting a dollar amount to the day-to-day work of a teacher is a far more tenuous connection to make.

Where I don't agree with the writer is the thought that cooperation and mentoring would suffer in a merit pay environment. If there are grade-level and school-level goals on top of the classroom goals it benefits you if your team and school are also doing well.

You can read the entire letter here. The author is John Merrifield, a professor at the U of Texas at San Antonio who has written extensively about school choice.