Kendallville, Indiana, 1968. This city and this year are important because of their association with the merit pay concept for teachers. 1968? Yes really! Kendallville had a National Demonstration School, East Noble High School. In 1968, the high school was testing two new ideas: flexible modular programming and merit pay! People came from all over the world to study this school.

During my college days, I attended Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Some of you may recognize this as the college that David Letterman, famous for late night talk shows, attended. The university gets its name from the Ball family who made their fortune making Ball canning jars (like Mason jars, but east of the Mississippi River). Now you may be more familiar with Ball Aeronautics. Such an amazing example of adapting to change!

Before I got college status, my school was called Ball State Teacher’s College and it was the # 2 teacher prep school in America. In one of my education classes, we took a field trip, yes, a college field trip, to see this National Demonstration School. I don’t remember anything about flexible scheduling, but the merit pay experiment surprised me and I never forgot it.

At East Noble HS, each teacher had a small box on the wall next to their classroom door. This happened when teachers actually had the same classroom all day. Each of the students received 3 tokens. (I have no idea why the number chosen was three). Students would place these tokens in the teacher boxes they deemed worthy of merit.

On that field trip, my first question was “What is stopping the students from moving the tiles?” The answer was “Nothing”. My second question was “What prevents students from giving the chips to young and popular teachers instead of the best teachers?” Once again, the answer was “Nothing”. That day, I realized that there was absolutely no merit for merit pay; and there never would be. There’s just no way to make it fair. Certainly, basing it on the evaluation of the students left much to be desired. This Kendallville experiment failed, as did all other attempts to establish a merit pay for teachers. It is not difficult to understand why they fail.

Now, fast forward more than 40 years. Merit pay in business seems at least a little more effective because it is generally designed for ALL workers to strive for a common goal of company success, and everyone will benefit if the company meets its goal. Everyone has the “acceptance” of success. If a similar approach could be used in schools, merit pay could have value. But schools cannot function as businesses.

Merit pay for business would fail miserably if company workers were told that only the ______ department (media, cleaning, staff, etc.) was going to be evaluated and only THEY could get merit raises. The company would experience an almost instantaneous decrease in productivity in the other departments, as nothing they could do would benefit anyone, including themselves. Similarly, if company workers were told that their jobs were at stake based solely on the performance of that department, the company would experience massive resignations. Not having control over one’s financial life does not make employees happy and efficient. This is a very simple concept that entrepreneurs understand. Why don’t the general public and “education experts” just get it?

The latest version of merit pay for teachers is to link pay to No Child Left Behind results. Note that only ninth and tenth graders take math and reading / writing tests, and in some places tenth graders take a science test. Therefore, only teachers of these subjects in these grades have the possibility of receiving any merit pay. No junior or senior teachers, no history, art, foreign language, physical education, etc. will qualify. For them, no matter how hard they work or how far their students actually advance, there will be no merit pay. Additionally, teachers in lower-level and special education classes will also be excluded.

Considering that most teachers in the school cannot have any impact or control over test results, the government, be it local, state or federal, has added one more insult to the injury. Students themselves have NO personal responsibility for their results. You, as a teacher, have your entire livelihood tied to students who simply DO NOT CARE about your performance because your results will have no impact on them.

The following four elements are taken from an article on the PROS of this new approach to merit pay. I suspect you will be able to see the flaws in each one:

(1) This new approach will “motivate” all teachers in a school to work harder. (EVERYBODY?)

(2) This new approach will “recruit the brightest minds in the nation” in education. (This one just makes me laugh! What “brighter mind” would enter the field of teaching now?)

(3) This new approach “will address the injustice of underpaid teachers.” (Can any “expert” say this seriously?)

(4) This new approach will “fix the teacher shortage” by encouraging people to enter the field of education. (See my reaction to # 2.)

As a retired teacher who loved what she did, if someone were to ask me my opinion about entering the field of education now, I would have to say “run as fast as you can in any other direction” until sanity returns to education (assuming that ever do).

Merit Pay is a humorless joke. There is nothing in it that can improve education. It didn’t work in 1968 and it still doesn’t work. Why do we keep pouring money down the drain?