In Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron Saxton’s campaign against incumbent Gov. Ted Kulongoski, he has made education a key issue of his platform.
Saxton, a former Portland school board chairman, supports the notion of merit pay, which is when teacher salaries are determined by students’ performance on Oregon’s standardized tests administered in grades 3-12. Giving a teacher an incentive to primarily prepare students for standardized tests will result in much narrower curricula. Those incentives will also reduce necessary opportunities for students to explore important topics that standardized tests do not cover. Any action that increases the already overlylarge role of standardized tests in public schools should be avoided at all costs by Oregon policy makers.
In addition, according to the Oregon School Boards Association’s Web site, in the 1972-73 school year, 11 Oregon school districts tried alternative pay plans such as merit pay. The experience indicated that it was generally unsuccessful, in Oregon and across the nation. Most merit pay plans were founded on an idea of individual teacher performance that created competition among teachers, causing them to eagerly recruit the best students. According to the OSBA, merit pay “actually undermined – and almost destroyed – the staff teamwork needed in schools.”
“Teacher unions also opposed the plan because its evaluations were subjective and were not based on objective data,” the OSBA site states. Most plans in Oregon provided added monetary incentives in addition to the regular compensation program, which
developed financial difficulties that resulted in budget cuts.
Merit pay is unfair to teachers who choose to teach in underprivileged communities or in classrooms that include special-needs students. The system does not reward those who choose to better their communities or choose to teach in special education classrooms. In addition, students’ learning is a team effort throughout the entirety of their educations and is not dependent upon a particular school year for proficiency.
There is no effective way to measure any teacher’s success. Determining pay by students’ standardized test scores will not ease the state’s woes. Saxton needs to realize that merit pay will hurt children’s school careers more than it will benefit them.
While this is not necessarily an endorsement for Gov. Kulongoski, the Emerald’s Editorial Board feels that merit pay is not the answer to the future of education in Oregon.