Roy L. Lowrie
Merit pay, often proposed as an educational panacea, sounds appealing, but here as elsewhere the devil is in the details. Merit pay is the idea that teachers’ salaries should be based on the quality of their work, not just their preparation and experience. Proponents believe merit pay motivates teachers to teach better. The idea can even be defended biblically from 1 Timothy 5:17 if we understand the word translated “honor” to include monetary compensation.
Most Christian school board members are businessmen who understand merit pay because it fits the business model. In business, an employee’s compensation is based on his ability to contribute to the company’s success as measured by profits. However, education isn’t business, and the approaches of the corporate world are not always applicable.
Merit pay appears “fair” because teachers who teach better are paid better. And yet the compensation packages in most Christian schools are not based on fairness but on shared sacrifice. Introducing merit-based stipends into a sacrifice-based compensation system seems strangely disingenuous. Merit pay starts with the premise that teachers teach for their paycheck, and that basing their pay on performance motivates them to improve the quality of their teaching. This false premise is one of several fatal flaws that render merit pay ineffective and even harmful. A poor or even average teacher may teach for the money but not a gifted one. The rewards for talent, ability, and effort are so much greater in business that educators who are attracted to money leave teaching within the first seven years. Those who choose to stay, and who grow to be truly meritorious, are intrinsically motivated. Christian teachers persevere and excel because they are called by God. In short, they teach because they are teachers.
Money does not create excellent teachers even though a lack of money is a common reason for leaving the profession. A sociologist would state that money can work as a “dissatisfier” for teachers but not as a “satisfier.” Even if money were a motivator, merit pay would have narrow and rapidly diminishing effectiveness. For instance, if the top ten percent of the faculty received a bonus, there might be twenty percent with the experience and giftedness to be considered. The other eighty percent might make some effort to compete, but just for the first year or two. To illustrate, if one throws a bone into a dog pound yard, every dog jumps for it the first time, and half jump the second time. By the third toss, only two big dogs fight for it. The rest scheme how they can bite the thrower! Studies show that a hundred percent of teachers consider themselves in the top half of their faculty in quality, and fifty percent place themselves in the top ten percent. Thus merit pay results in disgruntled employees.
Merit pay is further hamstrung by problems of evaluation. Merit pay is intended to reward and encourage excellence, but excellence, like beauty, is easier to spot than to define. The legion of normal challenges caused by faculty evaluation is multiplied exponentially when money is attached to the results. Moreover, a merit system can create so many procedural demands that administrators become ineffective in meeting the school’s other needs.
Merit pay requires a definition of excellence. Evaluative criteria may describe competent or even good teaching but can never define greatness. A cookbook may have fine recipes, but a real chef does not use one. Excellence, like genius, cannot be reduced to a checklist. An administrator who thinks he can define excellent teaching has not known many excellent teachers. Criteria-driven evaluation is useful for young or struggling teachers, but there is no cookbook for excellence. Instead of jury-rigging a system according to a business model, administrators need to start from the premise that the best teachers in any school teach because they are teachers. They are intrinsically motivated, sacrificing financially but laying up treasures in heaven as they reap a harvest in the hearts and lives of students. What rewards them most is the opportunity to teach even better. The most effective use of limited money is investing it directly into improving the teacher rather than using it as a carrot.
Christian schools that seek to reward excellence should establish a merit fund of between two and five percent of the total personnel budget. This money is used to reward excellence by investing it directly in improving the best teachers. For instance, an excellent teacher is told that the school has $3,000 to invest in his teaching. He can use the money either for instructional equipment or for additional training, but it cannot go to him personally. For example, he can buy two new computers for his classroom, attend the International Institute for Christian School Educators (IICSE), or visit the journalism departments of ten top Christian schools, but he cannot buy a used bass boat.
The teacher is given the privilege of proposing what investment would most improve his ministry with the students. The award can be made publicly or privately at the discretion of the school. This plan does not replace regular in-service training of teachers or investment in graduate schooling.
The superiority of this plan in a Christian school is obvious. The faculty’s esprit de corps is maintained because the reward is not in cash. The excellent teacher is rewarded in an area directly related to his motivation. The school gets a good return on its investment because the reward is used to enable an excellent teacher to soar even higher.
Merit Pay 1.3