Merit Pay is no silver bullet to improve schools.

by Pavlyn Jankov, CTU Researcher  |  09/20/2011

CTU Quest Center Reports on the Truth about Merit Pay

CPS CEO J.C. Brizard, said, in March, 2011, “The model for a teacher’s union is that it’s a union of professionals, and to be a professional you have to be treated as one. You don’t have first in, last out. That’s a Teamster mentality. If you do more, you get paid more, and if you’re more effective, you get paid for more.” He was referring to merit pay, which CTU’s research team has concluded does not work.

The simple-sounding idea that “if you’re more effective you get paid more” ignores the fact that teaching is a complex art that cannot be motivated or improved by financial gain. CTU’s research team pored over the research and concluded that not only does merit pay fail to improve education, it has clear, damaging effects on curriculum and educational equity.

The expectation underlying merit pay is that teachers will increase their efforts if given a monetary bonus to do so and that bonus should be tied to standardized test scores.

The vast majority of evidence from large-scale experimentation in merit pay shows no benefit to student achievement. Tying student test scores to pay is another in a long list of test-based accountability “reforms” that have skewed instruction towards test prep but not produced student achievement gains

Because the evidence clearly indicates that merit pay does not raise student performance, merit pay supporters instead emphasize the potential benefits to the composition of the teacher workforce. The logic is that the “best and brightest” will be motivated to enter the field because they will have the ability to make a comparable salary to the private sector.  No evidence supports this notion.

Merit pay practices undermine the goal of educational equity. Incentives that make standardized tests the focus of instruction for low-achieving students will further ingrain the two-tiered, inequitable education system. The effects of poverty on attainment need to be addressed with more resources and dependable services, not teachers paid through a merit pay scheme. An education system that differentiates and rewards teachers by faulty calculations of individual effectiveness will not develop the supportive environment that our students need. 

Click here to read the study.