Yes

by J.M. Schell

Created on: July 24, 2008

Why Should Teachers be Any Different From Other Professionals?

Those opposed to paying teachers in the same fashion most other professionals are paid can typically be counted upon to trot out the same hoary excuses for why this is a bad idea. While most teachers would be highly offended if you compared what they do to say, someone working on the production line of an auto factory, attaching wheels to cars, they'll nevertheless defend the union pay scale system under which they are paid. It makes no sense. Doctors are not paid in this way. Lawyers aren't. Even most nurses are no longer paid this way.

The first line of defense is the same one union teachers use to justify never judging their performance by the outcome. There are few jobs-and none in the professions-where you are not judged by your performance. Teachers somehow believe they should be exempt from this, that in fact there is simply no way to "test" how well they do their job. This is, of course, nonsense on stilts. Anyone paying attention over the past 40 years or so knows very well how poorly teachers, in the main, have done. This is why so many Americans graduate high school without being able to read or write, unable to make change and who can't tell you in which century the Civil War took place. In my state, voters instituted (over the strenuous objections of the classroom teachers and their unions-and despite the millions of dollars they poured into the state to defeat the issue) a system by which students are tested in 3rd, 5th, 8th and 11th grades as a means of determining whether a school and its teachers are doing their job. It worked fine for a decade, after ironing out some bugs. Of course, the very first thing that our newly-elected Democrat-majority legislature and Democrat governor began doing the moment they could, was to dismantle this system at the behest of the teachers who'd been moaning and groaning and undermining it since its inception.

Teachers next claim there are "too many factors" that go into whether a child learns or not. In my profession, I have to deal with thousands of factors under the baleful eye of both state and federal regulators in order to complete tasks I contract to do. How about lawyers? Teachers enjoy comparing themselves to lawyers as "professionals." Can you imagine the hundreds of thousands of details that a lawyer trying or defending a murder case must deal with? In fact, having myself taught, I'd say the teacher's job is far simpler. Teachers are provided a set curriculum the boundaries of which they must not cross. In elementary school, given, they have a host of subjects to teach, but at that low level, these are hardly difficult (I taught 5th grade). In middle and high school, they specialize in one area and in my experience as a sub teacher, most rarely know their subject material. I've run across high school literature teachers who cannot effectively identify the theme in old standards such as Lord of the Flies and Catcher in the Rye. How they've managed to get through life without figuring out what these two perennial favorites in the schools since the 1950s and early 1960s shows, if nothing else, true talent for maintaining an astonishing level of ignorance.

Teachers opposed to reasonable competition for pay in the schools will tell you that merit pay stigmatizes teachers through identifying which among a school staff are "good" and which are "bad." In fact, what it does, as a merit system does in any profession is identify which professional truly excel at what they do and which fall in a sliding scale from there down to incompetent. The real fear here, is that testing or other means of establishing merit pay will tend to identify mediocre and incompetent teachers and to compare their skills and abilities with the better-to-excellent teachers. In my profession, I would say I am adequate. Others are much more skilled than I, much more experienced and even simply more talented. Should they be punished because I am not as "good" at the job as they? That, in effect, is what those who argue against merit pay for teachers are saying. What those who so fear merit pay are always careful to avoid mentioning is how the current system tends to reward mediocrity (or even incompetence) while failing to reward excellence. Given, the very best teachers simply hitch up their drawers and ignore the fact that they stand head-and-shoulders above their "peers" and continue doing an excellent job. Less dedicated teachers know that they really don't need to bust their humps like those saps. They can kick back, spend all day surfing the net, or chatting over coffee in the hallway while their students languish. They don't need to learn the materials they are teaching beyond the barest minimum, to say nothing of becoming expert in their subject, because at the end of the month, their pay will be the same as the excellent teacher who does take the extra effort.

Then the teacher frightened of a system in which his or her pay is based on his or her demonstrated (key term) skills, falls back on that old standby: "It's not our fault! It's the parents and the home life!" Indeed, this plays a role in whether kids come to school "ready to learn." But as they say, them's the breaks. All of us face such issues in our jobs. There are few jobs in which everything is perfect all the time. I am faced daily in my work by clients who demand too much, sites (where I perform a part of my job) that have all sorts of issues I need to deal with and of course the inevitable communications and computer and other equipment breakdowns that plague virtually anyone in any job. Why is it that teachers believe they and they alone should have jobs completely absent any drawbacks or problems? Why is it teachers believe that the raw product that comes to them (students) should arrive fully formed and complete allowing them to simply, what, open the tops of their students heads and easily pour in information?

Finally, any "good" argument against merit pay for teachers must attempt to beg the question by claiming that the "real" debate should be about "better/parity pay" for teachers. The reality is that for what they do and when you don't, as teachers routinely do, ignore the rich package of benefits most teachers enjoy, teachers with more than a few years under their belts are generally paid very well already. The United States spends more on "education" than any other developed nation and the lion's share of that goes to personnel costs, including teacher pay.

No, the "real" debate is what it is: teachers, like any other professional, should be paid according to how well they do their job, not on simply showing up.

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