I realize that others have written about the magnificent piece by Joe Stiglitz titled In No One We Trust. There were two paragraphs that spoke directly to me, and upon which I would like to ruminate.
After writing about the strange idea that financial executives already being paid millions needs stock options to motivate good performance, Stiglitz offers this paragraph:
Similarly, teachers must be given incentive pay to induce them to exert themselves. But teachers already work hard for low wages because they are dedicated to improving the lives of their students. Do we really believe that giving them $50 more, or even $500 more, as incentive pay will induce them to work harder? What we should do is increase teacher salaries generally because we recognize the value of their contributions and trust in their professionalism. According to the advocates of an incentive-based culture, though, this would be akin to giving something for nothing.
In answer to the question he poses, whether giving teachers some more money will motivate them to work harder, I can speak not only for myself but from knowledge of the research literature and the many expressions by teachers over the years: NO. It will not.
Please follow me below the squiggle while i ruminate upon this.
I began public school teaching in December of 1995. I have had around three dozen of my former students enter the field, and remain in contact with a number of them. I have mentored a number of student teachers from the University of Maryland College Park. I am an alumni mentor for graduates of the School of Education at Johns Hopkins. I have been lead union rep for more than 100 faculty at the high school at which I taught for 13 years. I have been a department chair. I have guest lectured in education programs at several universities. I have helped organize a major event on education policy. I regularly have educators reach out to me because of my online presence.
I have not yet met a teacher who entered the field because of money.
I know many who have left because of lack of money, and the desire to live a normal life.
I have been better paid than many teachers. Even so, even at my highest salary along with an additional stipend for my National Board status, my salary has never reached what it was when I left data processing in 1994 to study to become a teacher. And before anyone says that I only worked ten months and had long holiday breaks, I had to do my required continuing education on my own during the summers, and my average week during the school year was usually around 55-60 hours, counting the time making phone calls, planning, correcting papers, writing letters of recommendation, counseling students, attending school events as a means of building relationships with students.
For all the words people offer on behalf of teachers, if the standard by which we indicate value is monetary we do not particularly value teachers.
Teaching is ultimately a matter of relationship. It requires a relationship of trust between teacher and students, and for the teacher to be able to operate on that basis, it requires that administrators be willing to trust the teacher.
I regularly write here about teaching and education.
Three recent pieces bear some relevance to this paragraph by Stiglitz, in fact to his entire piece.
First was What if . . . ., which explored some of my motivations for continuing teach, even as I struggle both with what I confront as a teacher and some of my own personal demons and bugaboos.
Then I write about one important way I try to build relationships, in Teaching - Giving Thanks to students, a piece that for some reason drew relatively little traffic here, but which led to an important communication from a student, that leading to Teaching as a relationship of trust this past weekend.
If I am to be successful as a teacher, I have to build a relationship of trust with my students. That will start with my trust in them if I want theirs in me.
But I am expected to abide within certain rules and laws.
I am subject to evaluation from others.
I have to be prepared to justify my decisions both in instructional and in disciplinary matters.
I am already held to a higher standard than were the bankers who cratered our economy.
We have reason not to trust them to operate without adult supervision, and that does not mean regulators beholden to them for future employment who therefore are reluctant to act more forcefully in the public interest.
But no external standard imposed upon me matches that I impose upon myself, which it to start with my students - who they are, where they are, what they know, what they fear, and how I can best serve them.
I will not claim that all teachers are perfect. Far from it. Even the best among us is a flawed human being, and trust me, our students - if they trust us or sometimes even if they don't - have ways of making that perfectly clear.
We can get impatient, burnt out, worn down.
Yes we want to make enough money that we do not have to take second jobs during the school year or wear ourselves down during the summers in order to pay our bills so that we an keep doing what for so many is our passion.
Effective teaching is a vocation, not merely an occupation.
Yet we are subject to the same pressures as our students.
Our students begin school eager to learn. As they progress they become alienated and cynical - will it be on the test becomes the measure as to whether they should pay attention.
Teachers get worn down by round after round of "reform" or of the latest "initiative" of the new superintendent or of the latest batch of overpaid consultants.
Merit pay has been tried many times, in many places, over a period going back more than a century. It has not worked.
Nor has it been effective as a motivator in business or finance. Which is strange that it is folks from the business world who want to impose it upon education. Perhaps they as individuals benefited from such compensation schemes, but does that mean they were motivated to do a better job as job or merely motivated to try to earn the bonus, and were willing to game the system to achieve the reward?
The social science research is clear, and it substantiates what Donald Campbell wrote decades ago:
The more any quantitative social indicator (or even some qualitative indicator) is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.
Of particular note for those who advocate using test scores to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers and to compensate them accordingly are these additional words from Campbell:
achievement tests may well be valuable indicators of general school achievement under conditions of normal teaching aimed at general competence. But when test scores become the goal of the teaching process, they both lose their value as indicators of educational status and distort the educational process in undesirable ways. (Similar biases of course surround the use of objective tests in courses or as entrance examinations.)
I said there were two paragraphs from Stiglitz that caught my attention.
The other was his final paragraph:
Strong values enable us to live in harmony with one another. Without trust, there can be no harmony, nor can there be a strong economy. Inequality in America is degrading our trust. For our own sake, and for the sake of future generations, it’s time to start rebuilding it. That this even requires pointing out shows how far we have to go.
Note particularly these words, which are what really grabbed me attention:
Inequality in America is degrading our trust.
It is also degrading our democracy, as too much wealth and too much power accumulate into too few hands, the necessary preconditions for trust that our democratic republic is intended to benefit us all disappears, and then we confront a possible abyss of civil disorder because too many people have too little hope, and desperate conditions create desperate and dangerous situations. Bread and Circuses will then be insufficient.
I am a teacher. In all I do, including writing here, I am a teacher.
If I cannot build a relationship of trust with my students, I cannot function effectively as a teacher.
Stiglitz understands how wrong the notion of incentive pay is in motivating good teachers, especially when it is based upon student test scores.
I understand that Stiglitz mentioned teachers only as part of a larger discussion.
I am a teacher.
I thought it worth giving it a more focused discussion.
Peace.