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| Piles of Education Research |
My letter to the editor (below) was
published this week in the Janesville Gazette:
Janesville School District officials are pitching a pay-for-performance teacher salary structure not supported by educational reasoning or research.
The proposed Professional Performance Structure (PPS) will move my kids’ district from a simple, fair, objective and efficient teacher salary schedule to an unproven, complicated, labor-intensive, divisive and stack-ranked pay system. While the proposal may please free-market ideologues, it will not better motivate teachers and improve my kids’ district.
Our local officials, who tout evidence-based leadership, should yield to the motivational and educational evidence related to merit pay. Overwhelmingly, the motivational research shows labor involving highly cognitive skills—such as teaching—does not improve with incentivized pay. Dozens and decades of teacher merit pay schemes have failed to improve student achievement. Local school leaders have yet to produce substantial educational research to support this radical reform proposal.
