Skewed columns from FRED, a monthly newsletter
published by the Worcester County Teachers
Association. Editor, Gwendolyn Lehman Skewed There are things and ideas that should just go
away and never come back, like bell-bottom pants
and stiletto heels with pointy toes. I imagine that
the reason these things do come back is that there
are always people willing to try them on for
awhile, having forgotten that they are not sailors
or having failed to discern that the human foot is
not shaped like a steak knife and that the human
spine will indeed succumb to the stresses of
upright walking on teensy points raised four inches
into the air. Yes, there will always be people with
bad backs and bunions tripping over their bell
bottoms who are hard to convince. Now, I do not want to suggest that all of the
members of the Steele Commission wear pointy-toed
stilletos and bell-bottom pants, but they did come
up with the old idea of "merit pay." Now, this is
how I feel about "merit pay." When the CEO of a
failing, or failed, corporation stops being pushed
out the corner office window wearing a multimillion
dollar golden para-chute, then I'll consider "merit
pay" for teachers. I will admit that once, when I was a much
younger teacher, I found the idea of "merit pay" to
be singularly appealing. Why shouldn't I be paid
more than teachers who weren't working as hard as I
was? I had bigger classes, more preps, more grades
to calculate. I sponsored more after-school
activities, and my students got higher test scores
~ whoops! Higher test scores? Well, not every year.
Especially not the year I was assigned the boy who
did not know the alphabet past "j." I was stunned.
I was flummoxed. I had not even considered that
this was possible. He was in the 8th grade! But
then I had only been teaching for two years. At that point in my career, it also had not
occurred to me that there might by any number of
variables in this boy's life over which I had
absolutely no control. I hadn't yet accepted the
possibility that I might not be SuperTeacher, that
there might be some factors so huge and so outside
of my control that all of my efforts could come to
naught. The alphabet for this boy was stopping at
"j," no matter how hard I worked to get him to move
on down the line . . . to k, l, m, nop ~ p ~
Nope. Soon after, I was realizing that there could be
any number of years when the only students I'd meet
didn't have "k"s in their alphabet. And there was
at least some chance that I wouldn't succeed in
giving them to them. For I had noted that I was
teaching students who could not properly address an
envelope. This was a basic skill I was determined
to teach them. I had made a series of carefully
crafted boxes, each one fitting into the next so
they nestled together in cozy order. The largest
box was the universe. The smallest box was their
house. I was so proud of that lesson. I had
forgotten that, "Pride goeth before the fall." The
big stumbling block was this: they could not get
past the confusing problem of the difference
between one's county and one's country. There was
that nasty little problem of an "r." I went home
from work and cried. This was also when I began to soberly consider
the true ramifications of merit pay. Did I merit
less pay because my boxes had failed to teach them
where they lived and how to send themselves a
letter? Who would decide what was "meritorious
service?" Did effort count or only results? If
results, how would they be measured? A test? Then
what test? Would I be paid more for teaching more
kids even if I was teaching them less? Would I be
penalized for making someone angry by being
assiigned only kids without "k"s? What if I didn't
teach the kid the rest of the alphabet but I did
get him to come to school more often? Was that good
for any points? Would I get more points, and thus
more pay, for having gotten my degrees at high
priced private colleges instead of a local state
university? Would I get more pay if I could score
higher on a standardized test for teachers like the
NTE? Could I get extra for scoring really high?
Where would the formulas end and what might happen
when budgets got tight? Perhaps no one would merit
much in the lean years. It's a complicated dance, "merit pay." We're
often told that this is the way the marketplace
works and business should be our model. But from
what I've read there are plenty of individuals
running major businesses into the ground while
pocketing enormous salaries. Why are they being
compensated so handsomely? Aren't they getting poor
"results?" I long ago gave up my bell-bottoms. I don't
scrunch my toes into pointy shoes and I can not see
myself a grandmother on stilletos. I have seen each
of these things make a comeback, though. And now
right there with them is "merit pay," courting a
whole new generation of young teachers with its
seductive allure. When you're young, you have more
energy and you still want to save the world. At my
age, all I want is a pair of comfortable shoes and
pants I don't trip over. I do still have this
feeling, though. Young or old, for a very good
teacher, there is no system in the world that could
ever pay them enough. And, of course, they're not
going to. Ending tenure, switching to merit pay, and
portable pensions with no guaranteed benefit is
what the Steele Commission has to offer. I say get
off your stilletos, trim the bell bottoms, and try
again. Gwendolyn Lehman SEPTEMBER 2006
Gwendolyn Lehman