LITTLE ROCK — NEVER GONNA happen. Why, the very idea. Can't fathom it. Dogs would start living with cats. Gene Lyons and Bradley Gitz would start complimenting each other's ideological wardrobe. Locusts! Chaos!
What, a teachers' union agree to a merit pay plan? What, a teachers' union agree to reward teachers based on their students'performance? What, a teachers' union worry-especially about standards and test results?
It's happened. (Cue thunder, lightning and screeches. Halloween has arrived.)
The dateline was New York. As in City. The teachers' union has agreed with Mayor Michael Bloomberg to try out a plan that would give teachers bonuses based largely on test scores.
Naturally the plan is far from ideal. Because the mayor's people had to negotiate it with the union. It shows: Any bonus money would be given to the schools, and then the money would be split up among the teachers as a committee (uh, oh) at each school decided. Talk about school politics and union favoritism. A better way to award merit pay would be to track the progress of the kids in each classroom, then reward the individual teacher for the best results. Simple, fair, effective.
But, hey, nobody's perfect. And no merit pay plan negotiated with a union is going to be. There are axes to be ground, turf to be protected. Especially when union leaders start wanting to compensate every card-carrying union teacher equally, even those who are more dittocopy dealers than educators.
But a start is a start.
HERE IN Arkansas, several school districts are experimenting with merit pay. Some use public money, some private. But it's all still largely experimental. Which isn't bad. If America is made up of 50 separate laboratories in democracy, then Arkansas could offer a thousand separate laboratories in meritpay. If only those 1,100 public schools had the resources, and the desire, to experiment. Pay-for-performance works in business, government, the arts, newspapering, advertising, the military, sports, entertainment, lawn care, the travel industry, the medical profession, motorcycle maintenance, lumberjacking . . . . Well, pay-forperformance works just about every timeit's used. It's called human nature. People not only want to be paid more for better results, but humans like to be recognized by their peers when their work is better than average. Whaddaya gonna do about human nature? Egalitarianism may sound good intheory-at least to some of us-but it doesn't seem to work well in practice. People are individuals-and like to be treated as individuals. It's called justice. Also achievement.
Which brings us back to New York City's plan. Its merit pay plan-if approved by that state's legislature-would start out at 200 schools where the kids need it most. (The plan would expand later.) Happily, the money handed out in bonus pay cannot be distributed based simply on the basis of teacher seniority. The bad news is that an entire school would be rewarded instead of individual teachers. Which means that some teachers could skate along, still copying and distributing those ditto sheets, and reap the benefits of the hard work of others. (Hey, boss, Philip Martin wrote a great movie review last week. How about giving us editorial writers a raise and a plaque?)
Still, New York City's plan is a start.And we have faith in human nature. Once checks start being passed out, it may be only a matter of time before the good teachers in the Big Apple start clamoring for more-and wondering why the timeservers are getting just as much money and recognition as the best professionals. Inevitably, the natives will grow restless and start speaking out. With or without the approval of their union bosses.
Editorial, Pages 20 on 10/27/2007