Merit Pay at the Secondary Level

Assessment based teaching/learning, which would be needed if we were to adopt merit pay for teachers, requires a different approach in the 9-12 vs. the K-8 curriculum. Secondary curriculum in most schools is a combination of required courses plus elective courses which allows some latitude for students to choose their own course of study. The most common tract in McPherson High School is a college prep program. If students are going to be equipped for college, this program should prepare them for assessment tests (required by “No-Child-Left-Behind”) and other standardized or college preparedness tests. Other students may choose other tracts, often along vocational lines, which may or may not cover the full range of skills, knowledge, and concepts required in assessment testing.

To accomplish this, some courses would need to be required to insure proficiency in assessment testing. Curriculum decisions would need to be made as to what these proficiencies are, what course work would be required to cover these, and how many course hours will be allotted to accomplish this. There should not be so many courses that student’s choices would be lessoned significantly. In all courses whose primary function is to prepare students for assessment proficiency, a pre-test may be needed at beginning of year followed by a post-test at the end of the year that can be used to determine student progress individually and collectively along with measuring teacher effectiveness – to determine merit pay.

One could use math as an example of this process. Determination would need to be made of what required courses would be needed to cover math proficiencies. Those in college prep program could elect to skip these courses if they followed continuum of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, calculus, etc. A similar process could be set up for science, reading, writing, and social studies.

In the elective courses, not designed specifically to teach assessment proficiency, teachers need to know what the proficiency requirements are. Then, teachers of these courses should attempt to include, where appropriate, those skills, knowledge, and concepts for assessment testing so that student’s proficiency would be re-enforced and enhanced. Beyond that, teachers will teach what has been established as the curriculum for this course of study. To establish a basis for merit pay, tests need to be developed or purchased from some reputable source where student proficiency and teacher effectiveness can be measured for that course.

If this sounds like all course work will be focused on “teaching to a test”, that is exactly what it is. If a school district accepts this philosophy of assessment based teaching/learning in order to fairly administer merit pay, one may have to face some possible negatives.

One of these is that student “learning” will be determined by the test used to measure what a student needs to know. Some would argue that present assessment tests given to students fail to measure that. For one thing, there is an emphasis in these tests on knowledge of random and isolated facts rather than problem solving skills that are a better measure of student’s preparedness to enter the real world. Plus, there is some criticism of the way these tests are structured and written.

Secondly, teaching students and students learning is not an exact science – there is not one way to do it. Teachers are not programmed robots and students are not sponges. Learning varies from student to student, class to class, and year to year. The best teachers recognize this, use creative approaches, encourage relevant problem solving approaches, take the time to re-group and approach learning in other ways if material is not learned, etc. Not encouraging and not allowing professional teachers to use their skills and experience curtails academic freedom and can discourage good teacher retention.

But, on the other hand, without agreed upon student proficiencies, one runs the risk of continuation of some ineffective teaching and students leaving school poorly educated.

I would suggest that the best way to approach this dilemma is to set up the curriculum process, administer the tests, and use the results to measure student proficiency, effectiveness of teachers and curriculum. Do all this without implementing merit pay. Adjustments could then be made in teaching strategies, in testing programs, and curriculum offerings without threat to teachers. Over time, if a general consensus is reached that our district has an excellent process in place, then institute merit pay. I contend that the most important element in quality education is good teaching and any process established should support, encourage, and reward their work.