Since my last post on Deval Patrick’s merit pay proposal elicited confusion on what exactly my gripe was, let me step back and clarify that the part of the reason it strikes me as wrong-headed politically is that it will be seen as stonewalling for teachers’ unions.
Now, I’ve never understood the demonization of teachers’ unions as some nefarious interest group. Sure, they’re a constituent part of the Democratic party. But Democrats come to sincerely agree with much of what the teacher unions lobby for, much as the Republicans come to sincerely believe in utilities deregulation. And whereas the teacher’s unions are a favorite whipping horse of conservatives and commentariat alike, I’m not sure that the general public is as exercised by their existence.
That said, I suspect that the general public holds to a commonsense idea that poor teachers should be held accountable and, secondarily, that good teachers should be rewarded. This is something that the education reform legislation pushes for in some modest form. It’s also something that union-based payscales militate against.
And Patrick’s merit-pay scheme is another way of saying “we know that people want to give merit pay to deserving teachers and withhold it from others, but I want to make sure those kinds of differentiations don’t happen.” To me, whether that would make sense as policy or not, that’s politically dumb. The politically reasonable thing to do would be to say some vague words about how teachers are valuable and then change the subject. Then, after winning the election, keep the status quo, or introduce your favorite pro-union policy when the limelight’s not on you. Or, barring that, actively make an uphill attempt at arguing why union pay-scales make sense and why the punitive mentality is a dead end in education policy (I actually think there’s considerable room for one, it just runs against a lot of people’s commonsense ideas). Patrick’s proposal has neither the political efficacy of the first approach or the intellectual honesty of the second. A lot of voters don’t like the idea of union pay-scale for teachers; you can either sidestep the subject or take on their dislike, but to do neither seems dangerous.
But what about the merits of the proposal? To me it misses the advantages of the MCAS legislation (either it fails to encourage performance or creates a really bad free rider problem) while keeping the disadvantages (MCAS itself is a poor way to measure teacher performance). In the grand scheme of things, it probably won’t do much of any harm, so I’m not all that bothered by it. But surely there would be policy out there that would do some good, so it would be a lost opportunity.
My comments are certainly predicated on two assumptions:
- There are a significant numbers of bad teachers out there.
- Union pay scales in fact currently don’t give much room for individual performance to be considered in pay raise - at the very least they downplay these over other factors such as degree credentials or seniority.
I didn’t go to school in Massachusetts and don’t even know anyone who is in a public school here. And I’m not versed in the details of ed policy. So corrections to these assumptions welcome. Also, I’m curious to know what teachers and teachers’ unions actually think of Patrick’s merit-pay proposal.
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