Obama's Education Policy
This article seems interesting to me as a future educator (and son of a lifelong educator). What primarily interests me is the core idea of turning to “merit pay” for educators. The idea of merit pay in public education seems like introducing a market mechanism to an institution that is decidedly NOT based on free market principles. Most importantly, schools are not “for profit” institutions. That has a lot of impacts because schools aren’t truly competing with each other for dollars by providing the best service to customers that they possibly can as they would if each person was paying directly for the service.
Ideologically, most people seem to be pretty receptive to merit-based systems in general. I certainly am. The unfortunate part about education as a field is that objective measurement is extremely difficult when it comes to measuring how much a person has learned, how well they can apply it, etc. As physicists have noted , the simple act of observing and measuring something can alter the nature what is being measured and in turn, alter the final measurement.
I’m sure all of us have had an instance of particular genius or inspiration where we did something really neat and we called our friends or family over to see us replicate what we originally did to no avail. Would a polaroid snapshot of that failure accurately represent our abilities?
That is to me the core issue with respect to “merit based” systems in education. What is merit in education? The way everyone wishes to measure that is with test scores showing that students learned X, Y, or Z. In math or science that may be sufficient at times, but what about the social sciences, art, etc?
Merit is something incredibly tricky when it comes to education. Like pornography, we all “know it when we see it,” but it is really hard to point exactly at how to measure it. We have all had at least one brilliant and inspired teacher that we will never forget and have also probably had one bottom-of-the-barrel teacher that made us curse the educational establishment with every fiber of our being. We, the students, know what a good teacher looks like. Do we as a society know that, though? Do we know it well enough to say we can measure it objectively enough to stratify the educational system?
There is also the issue about whether or not merit-pay would simply create a monetary incentive for teachers to think inside the box, teach to the test (which is how they would most likely be evaluated for merit pay), and “get with the program.” That might actually made some mediocre teachers better and more accountable. What about the great or inspired teachers that really go off the map at times to get students to think critically or more importantly, think for themselves? I’m not saying that a standards based approach and being a damn good teacher are mutually exclusive. Good teachers are good teachers. However, I question whether there is a net benefit here from such a policy and how such a policy would shape our educational system over time.
I certainly don’t have the answers and I really don’t want to suggest that this policy is doomed or bad. I think the intentions are good here. I just have some major reservations, especially in the absence of any actual articulated plan on behalf of the Obama administration. I think this is something every one of us should take a long hard look at as citizens and think about it, though.
My intuition is that this is not the right direction with respect to education, but that is to be expected when government officials and not educators have control of educational policy . That, ultimately, is a byproduct of the non-free market nature of education.
-Evan
