Extra Credit

In 2007, only 34 percent of eighth-grade students in public schools across the country could read at or above the “proficient” level designated by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Sadly, this deficiency represents just one among the myriad issues that plague public schools—from overcrowding and lack of resources, to poor achievement and ineffective teaching methods.

In one of the most underperforming school systems in the country, New York City schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein has begun to implement novel changes to help improve student achievement as much and as quickly as possible. Most notably, Klein has incorporated a pay-for-performance model that rewards schools for increased student achievement. While this incentive-based plan represents a step in the right direction, more must be done in the way of individual merit pay for teachers to truly improve teaching in every classroom.

Under Klein’s model, rather than appropriate bonus pay to individual teachers, schools that have made progress on their report cards over the last year will receive lump sums of money to distribute however they see fit. The bonuses—which total $14.2 million overall—amount to several thousand dollars per school, adjusted based on what percentile of its goal for progress the school has achieved. Most schools have elected to divide the bonus equally among all teachers, acknowledging that a student’s performance depends on a number of factors—from previous teachers to educators outside his primary classroom. Other schools will vary their distribution of the bonus slightly, giving more money to teachers who are in charge of extra-curricular activities and less money to classroom aides.

Klein’s plan represents a marked departure from traditional models of merit pay, which reward individual teachers for increased achievement. Teachers’ unions have historically criticized and opposed such schemes for many reasons, including the competition it provokes among teachers and the manner in which it rewards performance based solely on test scores. Klein’s concession to reward entire schools instead has been remarkable in winning union support, but sadly concedes too much: Appropriating money soley on a school-wide basis will not effectively motivate individual teachers.

Instead, schools should explore a hybrid merit pay model, in which schools-wide bonuses will be complemented by rewards given to individual teachers based on their students’ test scores. Such a model uniquely achieves both individual and collective accountability for achievement: Granting bonuses in a lump sum to a school will encourage teachers to work together, while appropriating awards on an individual basis will hold teachers accountable within their own classrooms. If a teacher knows that her bonus is based on an average of her students’ scores, she will be more inclined to work closely with students who are most deficient in basic skills, hoping to accelerate them to the pace of the rest of the class.

Ideally, schools wouldn’t need to use test scores or report cards to measure teacher performance, and monetary rewards would not be necessary. But with the educational system in crisis, critics who bemoan the shortcomings of standardized testing simply cannot afford to ignore that such tests do provide benchmarks for basic proficiency, from which schools can evaluate their own performance. Merit pay systems may leave much to be desired, but they provide a notable avenue to address the failures of our current system, in which children who are several grade levels behind in basic math and reading skills are left to slip through the cracks.

Other proposed remedies for the education crisis—from charter schools to private school vouchers—merely skirt the systemic problems with public schooling and instead look to save a notable few students. By failing to provide access to all students, they fail to satisfy the ultimate goal of public education. Rather than move students to other schools, their current schools should be made better. And if fiscal incentives can effectively motivate teachers to increase student achievement, schools should utilize pay-for-performance systems in the short term.

In the long term, however, rewarding an increase in performance with pay may not be sustainable. Rather, more fundamental changes must be made, such as raising teachers’ salaries. For the amount of time they spend in the classroom, creating lesson plans, grading homework, and working to make sure their students succeed, teachers are grossly underpaid and underappreciated. An increase in salary would not only make the field more compelling for qualified college graduates but would also help to mitigate attrition rates due to teacher burn-out. More resources for schools—which currently can be purchased at the principals’ discretion with bonus money—would also help students learn more effectively.

While there is no quick fix to the education industry’s current crisis, radical and new solutions must be sought. Employing parallel tracks of individual and school merit pay in the short term is one such means of ensuring that schools fulfill their ultimate goal of providing every child with a good education.