Merit pay advocates are dealt a blow
December 30, 2011 by Christian SchappelPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter - benefits, Incentives, Latest News & Views, Pay and benefits
Many companies offer cash bonuses thinking it’ll improve employee performance. But a recent study shows that may not be money well spent, giving those who are against merit pay programs another feather in their cap.
Teachers at five Utah schools took part in a performance pay pilot program where the size of their bonuses was tied to student grades.
Result: Cash incentives alone didn’t have a noticeable impact on how well students did in class.
The Utah Education Policy Center at the University of Utah just wrapped up an assessment of the program. It found that while some schools performed better on student assessments, on the whole no noticeable difference in students’ assessment scores was achieved.
Under the program, teachers received bonuses on three criteria:
- 40% of individual bonuses were based on student achievement
- 40% on quality of instruction, and
- 20% on parent satisfaction.
Bonuses ranged from $500 to $2,600, with the average paid out being $1,786.
Some involved in the assessment weren’t sure if the bonuses offered were large enough to motivate teachers to improve.
One bright spot: 55% of participating teachers surveyed about the program said they increased communication with parents.
Tags: cash bonuses, cash incentives, merit pay, teachers, Utah
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January 3rd, 2012 at 10:40 am
This research is definitely not plausible in correlation to private employers with employees as we know them. Teachers are a separate subset of employee and ones whose performance or levels of production cannot be associated to “9-5″ people. This is comparing apples to oranges.
For example, take a 9-year old 4th grader in a mathematics class versus a 35-year old box packer in a manufacturing environment. The 9-year old is learning a concept over time where brain development comes into play. Regardless of how great the teacher is, that 9-year old may have an extremely difficult time with the material. Thus, an assessment test to gauge the teacher’s performance based on the student’s mathematic ability could be seriously inaccurate. However, the 35-year old box packer’s brain is already developed enough to understand almost immediately how to put a piece of packing tape on a box. The only thing driving his/her performance is how fast he/she can do so accurately; The concept is pretty much automatic.
Learning long division for the very first time in someone’s life = putting a piece of tape on a box? Hardly!
January 3rd, 2012 at 2:38 pm
@ Not Plausible, I agree with you partly, but your analogy only works if we are giving incentive pay to the person that is training the box packer based on how the box packer performs.
Paying the box packer an incentive is a direct relationship, and isn’t the same as paying the teacher based on how the student does. The direct incentive given to the student is the grade given to the student based on how they do. If you want to directly relate pay to performance for a teacher it may have to be based on student/hours taught or number of papers corrected or something else a teacher would have direct control of.
January 3rd, 2012 at 3:20 pm
Another thought…personally I think they should give merit pay to congress…oh wait they would owe us!