To Diane Ravitch re: Merit Pay

(My response to an article by Diane Ravitch - written in the form of a letter - on her co-authored Education Week blog Bridging Differences.)

Dear Dr. Ravitch,

It seems to me that your objections to merit pay largely have to do with the way it is currently being proposed.  I think most educators and many others in the field agree that using student standardized test scores as the primary means of assessing teacher effectiveness is ineffective.  Basing merit pay on test scores would therefore be equally ineffective.

I also agree that the prospect of a $5000 bonus isn't going to entice Ivy League graduates into the field.  I'm an Ivy League graduate myself (your list stopped just short of my alma mater, U. Penn) and believe me, if I thought I could be truly content doing anything else, I probably would - and not because of the pay.

The problem with studies showing that merit pay doesn't increase effectiveness is that they are testing the wrong thing.  It should be obvious that even very hefty bonuses cannot turn incompetent teachers into competent ones.  The questions that need to be asked are more complicated and difficult to measure.  We need to be asking how the prospect of being compensated according to accomplishment affects motivation and attitudes toward the profession.

I don't see how introducing merit pay will necessarily undermine teamwork and cause teachers to trade long-term thinking for short-term thinking. Why can't teachers be rewarded for long-term accomplishments rather than short-term ones?  Why can't they be collectively rewarded for collaborative work rather than merely as individuals?  This is not what's on the table at the moment, but I wonder if, rather than attacking merit pay per se, we ought to be proposing and campaigning for better ways of implementing it.  Do you really believe that a teacher's salary should have no correlation to his or her effectiveness in the classroom?

If rewarding teachers based on merit so corrupts school culture, shouldn't we also do away with grades for students, which are also based on merit?  No C-student should ever have to feel outdone by an A-student, so let's give everyone a C+ when they start kindergarten and pass them on from one grade to the next until they reach 12th grade, when we'll give them all an A+ and a diploma for all that they've accomplished in 12 years.  That's how we currently treat teachers.  As a future teacher, I find that humiliating.

It's clear that we absolutely have to do something introduce some concept of merit into the American public school teaching profession. 

If "attracting talent" is essential to improving the quality of teaching in our schools - and clearly it is, since we, unlike Finland, Singapore, and most of the rest of the world, currently draw our teachers disproportionately from the bottom of the pool - then we need to be asking:  What do America's "best and brightest" really want? 

They want to be challenged.  They want to have opportunities to accomplish great things and be recognized for the great things they accomplish.  It doesn't have to be through monetary reward; indeed, I would choose an invigorating work environment with colleagues and administrators who challenge me to refine my skills over a pay-raise any day.  But our current system offers neither.

However large or small that paycheck is, a teacher should know at the end of the day that he or she earned it; she just didn't get it for showing up.  Similarly, when I receive an MA in education and recommendation for teacher certification from your own NYU Steinhardt in two months, I'd like to know that it's because I produced good work and mastered the skills necessary to successfully enter the teaching profession - not because I showed up and paid tuition.  But even at a highly respected school like Steinhardt I have seen a shocking number of students doing little more than showing up and paying tuition, yet still being passed by their (mostly adjunct) instructors, foreshadowing the way they will soon be compensated as teachers.  For me, the worst part of being a graduate student in education and a student-teacher in a New York City public school is the fact that what is expected of me is so far below what I expect of myself that I have little way of knowing whether what I accomplish is truly excellent or simply better than the semi-mediocre “norm.”

I agree that merit pay as it is currently being proposed is not likely to be effective.  It is not possible to change the caliber of a school's faculty simply by offering the same teachers more money if they figure out a way to produce better test scores.  At best, a few teachers might be inspired to work harder, but what will they actually be working toward?  And better yet, how will they suddenly acquire the teaching skills and subject area competence they are lacking in order to become more effective?  Perhaps no form of merit pay can solve our problems.  But any type of school reform that does not have at its core an expectation that teachers be professionals of merit is a waste of time and an injustice to our students.

Christina Lordeman

Translation of my essay posted on Candan Erçetin's website (Jan. 2011)

I wrote this essay in response to an essay Candan Erçetin - my favorite Turkish singer, also an educator - shared on her website's new discussion platform.  Her essay, entitled Ondan Öğrendim (I Learned from him), beautifully tells of her recently deceased father's study at one of the so-called "village institutes" (köy enstitüleri), his tireless work as an educator, and the lessons he taught her about teaching and about life.  I was very moved by her words and spent weeks crafting and editing my response.

It ended up exceeding the character limit, so I sent it to the only email address I could find on the website, not knowing if it would even reach Candan, but hoping that somehow my words would reach her in Turkey.  Months later, when she posted again on the platform, she included a note mentioning that an essay had come to the platform from an American who had studied Turkish.  She added a direct link to my article and even complemented my Turkish as well.  Having never anticipated such a response, I was truly blown away.

Here is my translation of the opening of Candan's essay so the reader can understand the heart of her message: 

I learned from him...

not to act like I know everything
not to put on "Don't you know who I am?" airs
to finish what I start
not to be daunted by difficulties but instead to devote all my ambition and energy to overcoming them
to refine my knowledge and skills but not use the benefits of my education only for myself
never to sell myself, my word, or my country at any price
that I have a duty to be a fruitful citizen
that intellect and talent can always be developed
to do on my own that which I am capable of doing on my own
and most importantly,
that teaching requires a great deal of love, and abundance of patience and a reasonable amount of discipline. 

(from July 2010)


My essay in response (all quotations are from Candan's original essay):

It's easy to tell from my name that no, I'm not Turkish - I'm an American.  It was about 5 years ago in a beginner level Turkish class that I first heard a beautiful song called "Melek" ("Angel").  A few years later when I became very interested in Turkish music I remembered that song and began to discover who Candan Erçetin was.  Even though it took some work because everything was in Turkish, I greatly enjoyed both listening to Candan's music and learning more about her life and her career.  Aside from her amazingly beautiful voice, what struck me most was that she was a teacher - more precisely, that she continued teaching even as she became one of Turkey's most successful singers.

Now that I am fast approaching the start of my own career as a teacher, ever since I joined this platform and read Candan's essay "Ondan Ogrendim" ("I Learned from him"), I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.  I greatly admire the things Candan learned from her father as well as the way she lives them out in her life and career.  I, too, desire to be that kind of teacher - that kind of person, in fact.  But even more than that, while reading Candan's article I couldn't help feeling that she had actually, in some way, put my own thoughts and feelings into words.  Of course Turkey and the U.S. have very different education systems, but the sources of both systems' problems actually seem to be very similar. 

Soon after starting my Masters degree in education last year I found myself utterly disappointed.  Although I could hardly wait to start my teaching career, I was already bored with my education classes.  Everything I did got a "good" or a "great" from the instructors, and in fact some of those instructors led me to doubt whether they even knew anything about what they were teaching.  Most of my classmates had little or nothing intellectually stimulating to contribute to class discussions.  The courses weren't challenging at all - I got A's without much effort.  Everyone's expectations were very low.  As an undergraduate in a college of arts and sciences I had never experienced anything like this; the standards were much higher.  Especially when I thought of the students who would be sitting in our classrooms one day, the abysmal quality of my education classes made me furious.  If our future teachers aren't good students, and their teachers aren't good teachers, what kind of education are future generations going to receive?  How are they going to learn to be responsible, well-informed global citizens? 

Unlike what I've read and heard about Turkey and many other countries, it seems my country has decided that teaching is not a job for the great; it is a job for the mediocre.  Hardly ever is an outstanding student asked, "Have you ever thought about becoming a teacher?"  Quite the opposite: when an exceptional student decides to become a teacher, people say, "Oh, but you could do so many great things!" and tell him that other, more respected - and of course more lucrative - occupations are more suited to him.  

In the U.S., it is far easier to study a subject as an education student than as a student in an arts and sciences or fine arts program.  On top of that, when we learn that students in our K-12 schools are failing, it doesn’t seem to cross anyone’s mind that perhaps, by improving our university education programs, we might train better teachers who would improve the quality of education in our country.  Instead, we give students more and more standardized tests and make teachers responsible for the results in order to make sure the "important" material is learned.  While the education children receive becomes more and more focused on passing standardized tests, talented graduates are – understandably – opting for fields that are considered to be more challenging.  And who pays the price?   Students who are stuck in classrooms with unmotivated teachers and who barely know the very subjects they teach.

Perhaps that's why it was the part about "not using the advantages of my education only for myself" that struck me most in Candan's essay.  Being a teacher is not the only way of sharing such advantages, but it is a very important way of doing so.  I put a lot of effort into my education not only for my own sake, but also for the sake of all my future students with whom I will share the things I've learned.  Turkey's village institutes, which I heard about for the first time on this platform, seem to be a shining example of this idea of learning both for oneself as well as for others.  These institutes prepared future teachers by selecting highly talented students and giving them a well-rounded and intellectually demanding education, and they charged those teachers with the task of enlightening the country.  They understood the importance of teachers' skills as well as their ability to share those skills with others.  What a shame it is that the village institutes came to such an untimely end. 

The purpose of education never changes much in my opinion, neither in Turkey nor in the United States.  We must never stop working to raise up generations of individuals who know how to think critically, look at the world from multiple perspectives and express their thoughts in creative and effective ways – individuals who understand the value of our world, the value of knowledge, and most importantly, the value of mankind.  But if we fool ourselves into believing that this task is easy, we will not succeed. 

We are therefore in great need of intelligent, creative, and diversely skilled teachers who are also discerning, humble and selfless.  (In my own striving to become such a teacher I am inspired by people like Candan and her father.)  If the successful use their talents only for themselves, an inheritance meant to be passed on to future generations will be lost; at the same time, if teachers do not continue learning and developing their own skills and talents, countless others' will remain undiscovered.  Even if our education systems refuse to make this a priority, we teachers must set our own high standards for ourselves and orient ourselves toward them. 

As an education student I have learned that it is far more difficult to be excellent when one is only expected to be mediocre.  But even if the right path is a longer one, we must not turn from it, and, "when we encounter difficulties, we must not lose heart but instead turn all of our ambition and energy to the task at hand."  Our future depends on it.

Christina Lordeman

November 2010