The idea of performance-based compensation has been met with a lot of resistance. People working in the educational field feel that money should not be a motivator to do a good job. Furthermore, they are afraid that performance-based compensation will negatively affect cooperation among teachers. There also is fear of a drain of good teachers from disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Lastly, teachers could be tempted to brownnose school administrators in order to get into their good graces and make them more likely to be rewarded.
Up until 2006, teachers in the Netherlands were being rewarded for their years of experience in the educational field and the type of education – primary, secondary lower levels, secondary higher levels – they were in. In 2006 the Dutch Ministry of Education introduced the so-called Functiemix. This entails the Dutch government providing schools with extra funds to encourage them to reward teachers that excel at their jobs. Schools can determine their own interpretation of this reward system (Mininsterie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap). In every system, however, it’s the case that once a teacher manages to get into a higher salary scale, school administrations won’t be able to take this away, even when the teacher is no longer excelling. In this reward system, teachers can outperform one year, be put into a higher scale and reap the benefits for their remaining careers. This could not possibly lead to a higher quality of education. The organisation of a performance-based compensation system is an important factor in making it beneficial to the educational quality.
According to Firestone and Pennell (1993), introducing differentiated pay won’t, and should not, create a motivated teacher. In fact, they argue that giving teachers the opportunity to a higher salary undermines their intrinsic motivation, which is appears to be very important to teachers.
Nevertheless, the fact that current teachers are not motivated by monetary rewards does not necessarily mean that future teachers won’t be motivated to choose the profession because of them. This way, talented students could become more inclined to opt for the teaching profession instead of another – better paid – occupation. An increase in the number of teaching talents will mean better educational quality (Odden, 2001).
Others that oppose performance-based compensation fear that it will have a negative effect on the cooperation among teachers. Most teachers enjoy transferring knowledge; not only to their students, but also to other teachers. They like sharing lesson ideas and giving advice on good classroom practice. By introducing merit pay, the ensuing competition would entice teachers to no longer partake in such sharing activities, since they would not like their colleagues to benefit from work they otherwise would have shared with them, the so-called free rider problem (Cutler and Waine, 2000).
However, people are always reluctant to share with others who do not return the favour and do not put in any effort, regardless of whether there are any monetary rewards at stake; just look at the free rider problem in study groups at universities. In these study groups, there is no question of a monetary reward, yet students who do not participate fully in group work are not very much appreciated. The reluctance to share work or information is not characteristic of a performance-based compensation system, but rather to bad company policy. Merit pay could be an instrument to evoke a sharing culture, by rewarding cooperation among teachers (Hoerr, 1998; Odden, 2000).
It is also believed that introducing a performance-based system of compensation where performance is measured by looking at the students’ end results will only disadvantage already disadvantaged neighbourhoods, since talented teachers won’t choose to work there. They feel other factors, like socio-economic level and parental involvement, will have a similar or greater influence on students’ results compared to the effect a teacher has (Solmon and Podgursky, 2001). Working at an underprivileged school would not garner the teacher the same results as teaching at a privileged school could. Whilst the privileged schools would have their pick of talented teachers, the underprivileged schools – where they could actually use excellent teachers – could only choose from the ones not picked by the former.
Again, this is not a problem inherent in a performance-based compensation system, but it has everything to do with the design of the compensation system. It could be easily fixed by, instead of looking at standardised test scores (like the Cito final exams), measuring student achievement from a value-added point of view. Students could, for example, do pre-tests and their progress can be measured by dividing that score by the score gain the student on a later test and multiplying that by 100, garnering a per cent increase score. This way, a grade increase from a 4 to a 5 will stand for a 25% increase whereas an increase from an 8 to a 9 is only a 12.5% increase. Where students’ initial performance and results are lower, higher gains can be made because there is more room for improvement. This, in turn, can cause talented teachers to look for just these opportunities instead of avoiding them (Solmon and Podgursky, 2001).
Lastly, opponents of performance-based compensation systems have doubts about the integrity of the people making the decisions on which teachers will get rewarded and which teachers won’t. According to them this will be largely based on favouritism and will lead to sycophancy instead of a better quality of education. Usually, the best teachers are also the most critical and more difficult for the school administrators to deal with, potentially making the school administrators disfavour them (Solmon and Podgursky, 2001).
In order to avoid this side-effect, school administrators should also be assessed on student achievement. This will significantly increase the likelihood of the rewards going to the right people instead of to the compliant ones. Furthermore, something can be said for sharing the responsibility of rewarding among a larger group of people. A teacher should not only be reviewed by a school principal, but also by fellow teachers, teaching professionals they are unfamiliar with (from another school, for example), parents and students. This will lessen the interference by favouritism, make the assessment more reliable and all-encompassing and in turn lead to a teacher not only making sure that the classroom practice is in order but also other important aspects of the teaching profession like the student-teacher relationship and parent-teacher relationship.
In conclusion, there are quite some arguments against the implementation of a performance-based compensation system. However, all of these arguments are not integral to such a system, but rather have to do with an incorrect implementation and could quite easily be nullified by adjusting the way teacher evaluation is organised. Cooperation can be encouraged by making it part of the teacher assessment. A teacher drain from disadvantaged neighbourhoods can be prevented by devising a fair way of monitoring students’ progress. Favouritism can be countered by sharing the responsibility of assessment among a large and varied group of people. Introducing a well thought out rewarding system will make the teaching profession more interesting to new talents entering the job market as well as show the value of an excellent teacher. Teachers are important to society, it is about time they get the recognition they deserve.
References
Cutler, T. and Waine, B. (2000). Mutual benefits or managerial control? The role of appraisal in performance related pay for teachers. British Journal of Educational Studies, 48 (2), 170-182. doi: 10.1111/1467-8527.t01-1-00140
Firestone, W. and Pennell, J. (1993). Teacher commitment, working conditions, and differential incentive policies. Review of Educational Research, 63 (4), 489-525. doi: 10.3102/00346543063004489
Harvey-Beavis, O. (2003). Performance-based rewards for teachers: a literature review: For distribution at the 3rd Workshop of Participating Countries on OECD’s Activity Attracting, Developing and Retaining Effective Teachers 4-5 June 2003, Athens, Greece. Retrieved from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/17/47/34077553.pdf
Hoerr, T. (1998). A case for merit pay. Phi Delta Kappan, 80 (4), 326-327.
Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap (n.d.). Functiemix Leerkracht. Retrieved from http://www.functiemix.minocw.nl
Odden, A. (2000). New and better forms of teacher compensation are possible. Phi Delta Kappan, 81 (5), 361-366.
Odden, A. (2001). Defining merit. Education Matters, 1 (1), 16-24.
Solmon, L.C. and Podgursky, M. (2001). The pros and cons of performance-based compensation. Milken Family Foundation, Pascadena.
