Teachers' attitudes towards working in pay for performance environments

Teacher's Attitudes On Pay For Performance

Pay for Performance is not a new concept in the world of fiscal remuneration. The standard business and scholarly literature of the past three decades often postulates the question: what better, more productive way, to drive individuals to work harder, more efficiently, and to accomplish standards and goals than to offer them a special "performance" wage or bonus? Certainly, in current educational and governmental policy linking teacher pay to measures of student performance on standardized tests has been a theme of both the Bush and Obama Administrations. For fiscal year 2011, for instance, President Obama asked legislators to double the money provided in the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), to almost $1 billion. Yet that fund, as well as the entire concept of pay for performance, remains controversial (Marshall, 2010).

Since the adoption of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), students across the nation are given standardized test in the Spring of each year. The scores to these tests are important to the teacher, the school, the District, and the State as they are one of the primary ways administrators and governmental departments gauge funding for schools and programs, and how local managers and principals evaluate the pedagogical performance of teachers (Adams, Heywood and Rothstein, 2009).

Because this issue remains so controversial, it is continually debated in the academic and governmental fields, as well as the popular press. One of the seminal issues, however, is the examination of teacher's attitudes towards the subject; and one sorely missing from the pedagogical rubric. Certainly, the rationale for the debate is not complicated. A teacher's job is to educate -- to increase students' knowledge, skills, and abilities to function as good citizens. Proponents of pay for performance hold that managing education just as we would manage a larger corporation would reward and punish teachers based on how much students' learn. To assess this, though, we must use assessments that are focused on key learning targets (math and reading), are given nationally, and provide scoring data that may be used in comparisons between individuals, schools, programs, districts, and states.

Statement of the Problem- This rather straightforward approach to pay for performance continues to lead to simplistic policies that focus on standardized test scores in a few subject areas dominating accountability to the essential exclusion of all other evidences of performance. In addition, such focus fails to take into account the thousands of teachers in fields that either do not lend themselves to standardized tests (music, art, etc.), or to fields of education in which student performance is problematic, if not almost impossible to quantitatively judge on a national basis (special education or PE, for instance) (Special Ed Groups Try to Shape, 2010).

Despite the economic calculations, the social and cultural implications, and the plethora of political rhetoric, what is missing is a cogent and coherent study of teachers' attitudes towards pay for performance. Teachers do not expect to be paid like stock brokers or real estate agents -- sell product a for X and receive Y. Nor do most teachers feel that their entire school year, up to the national tests, should be devoted strictly to the subjects on the test. They clearly feel the economic conundrum of trying to live on a relative low salary in relation to experience and educational level, but also do not go into the field solely for fiscal reasons. Additionally, most believe that while it is vital, if not crucial, to establish basal levels of competency in the core areas of reading, writing, math and science, these subjects are not always indicative of student learning and progress (Wen, et.al., 2006).

Purpose of the Study -- in the past decade, the Project on the Next Generation of Teachers has interviewed a number of educators specifically on the subject of pay for performance. Most were honestly underwhelmed and dissatisfied with their pay, but also frustrated that they had very little chance to improve their earning power. In other fields, going the extra mile, investing extra weekend or evening time, or providing exemplary presentations and materials usually results in some form of bonus. In teaching, however, much of this is expected -- before and after school tutoring, evening performances, weekend events, out-of-pocket expenses for supplies and materials not covered in the budget (See: Johnson, 2004).

Thus, while still presenting the overall debate from the public administration, governmental, and even sociological (parental, community) views, the proposed study will focus on specific views and attitudes that teachers' hold towards a pay for performance concept. The study will examine current and proposed legislation adopting such a compensation package, as well as a qualitative evaluation of the efficacy of such programs within the 21st century educational climate. The study will quantitatively analyze the data based on demographic and psychographic indicators such as age, gender, ethnicity, teaching level, education level, length of time teaching, subject area, demographics of the school and classroom, classroom level, type of school (public, private, etc.), community (rural, suburban, urban), areas of specialization, and previous experience.

Qualitative measurements will include initial focus groups designed to establish robustness and relevance of questionnaire, surveys distributed to reasonable geographic areas, and follow up interviews as time allows. The data will then be quantitatively cross-tabulated to find statistical commonalities, with attitude ranges codified to allow for greater ease of analysis. Every attempt will be made to establish a broad enough sample group that will account for a reasonable distribution of variables. Unfortunately, while a longitudinal approach would be useful, it is not within the scope of this study. Finally, besides analyzing general attitudes towards pay for performance, the study will examine, based on the data collected, the most appropriate and realistic alternatives that will both enhance student learning and provide greater fiscal rewards for teachers (See: Johnson and Papay, 2010).

Research Questions-

Overall Hypothesis: Most teachers' do not view the pay for performance compensation model based on standardized test scores to be viable or indicative of student learning or teacher performance.