Liberal Talk Radio

Merit-based pay for teachers is an idea that’s gaining some traction, especially since leading Democratic presidential contenders are showing new spine in their relationship with the donkey-crack teacher’s unions (“donkey crack,” in that they’re an addictive, and destructive, drug for Democrats). For example, today’s WaPo notes how wunderkind Obama is trying to simultaneously push the idea of merit pay, while not offending the unions too much:

Barack Obama has the teachers cheering. The National Education Association is meeting here, and Obama– like the Democratic candidates who have spoken before him — is telling the crowd everything it wants to hear.

He’s “committed to fixing and improving our public schools instead of abandoning them and passing out vouchers.” Washington “left common sense behind when they passed No Child Left Behind.” Teacher pay must be raised “across the board.”

But then Obama tiptoes into the minefield of merit pay for teachers, so delicately that he does not actually utter the words “merit pay” until the question and answer session.

“If you excel at helping your students achieve success, your success will be valued and rewarded as well,” he says — but he hastens to add that this must be done “with teachers, not imposed on them, and not based on some arbitrary test score.”

This is whispering truth to power. But for the teachers, Obama’s words are fingernails on a chalkboard. They fall silent, except for scattered boos, as he mentions a modest new program in Minnesota.

While I embrace the idea of merit pay intellectually, I’m not sold on the idea for reasons including the difficulty of creating an incentives system that doesn’t lead to teachers “teaching to the test.”

Still, the thing I find most fascinating is that it seems like the teachers — speaking through the NEA — are implicitly assuming that their pay will decrease once a merit-based system is implemented. Think about it. If the majority of teachers felt like they’d get a raise as a result of a new merit-based system, my guess is that they’d be clamoring to make this happen, instead of using their best passive-aggressive obfuscating tactics to stop it.

That’s interesting, because generally speaking people tend to overestimate their own situation relative to the mean.  For example, most people believe they are smarter than average, wealthier than average, etc.  Which, of course, is impossible.

So, you’d think that most teachers would believe themselves to be above average, and thus likely to benefit from a system that rewarded the best teachers.  That they don’t is indicative of a certain risk aversion, and it’s ultimately an argument for implementing merit-based pay.  If even the teachers themselves don’t believe they’re skillful enough to win an incentive-based bonus, then it’s probably time to take them at their word and weed out the ones who don’t cut it.