Why Schools Can't Be Run Like Businesses (*see editorial on this in the Projo)
"Best Dentist" Analogy (click here)
List
of Reasons Why Merit Pay Won't Work (click
here)
It is ridiculous to compare private industry to the public education system in our nation, although, this is exactly what many critics do these days. They are not analogous and need to be considered under different pretexts. Given that teachers like to use analogies and metaphors to explain complicated topics, consider the following exchange from Education Week (true story) and others that follow:
A former business leader of the ice cream industry, Jamie Vollner, was made aware of these differences when he joined a corporate group that advocated reforming public education. In one of his speeches to the faculty at a local school, Mr. Vollner was proclaiming the efficiency and success of the business world in producing fine products, while criticizing the ineffectiveness of public schools to provide quality and successful students.
During his presentation, an English teacher raised her hand and asked whether his ice cream business produced good ice cream. Mr. Vollner replied smugly, “Best ice cream in America, ma’am.”
The English teacher then asked, “Do you use premium ingredients?”
He responded, “Super premium! Nothing but triple-A.”
The teacher then asked, “When you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?” Mr. Vollner’s ice cream business was famous for its creamy blueberry ice cream.
Mr. Vollner then replied, “I send them back.”
“That’s right!” the teacher barked. “And we can never send back our blueberries. WE take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with attention deficit disorder, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all. Every single one. And that, Mr. Vollner, is why it’s not a business. It’s school.” (Jamie Vollner wrote about this exchange in Education Week.)
The product or commodity in a business is vastly different than a child. There are so many socioeconomic factors to consider, such as the larger share of immigrant groups coming to this state versus a state like Iowa. Our poverty rate is higher than Massachusetts and Connecticut, as well as the fact that we have a higher cost of living than most states in this country. Of the 199,000 children in Rhode Island, 27,000, or 14% are living in poverty. Rhode Island ranks 19th in combating child poverty among all of the 50 states including the District of Columbia. (US Dept. of Labor) The median family income for a family of four in CT was 86,001, MA was 82,561, but RI was 71,098 in 2003 according to the U.S. Census ( see report). Consider that an affluent child has parents who can pay for tutoring, a computer, are probably college educated themselves, etc., whereas a poor child is more likely to live with a single parent who is probably not college educated. In other words, a child's education and his/her academic ability are determined by many other factors than that of one teacher's instruction in a year.
"The Best Dentist" Story (by John
Taylor, Superintendent of Schools,
Lancaster School District, South Carolina) - A good analogy:
My dentist is great! He sends me reminders so I don't
forget checkups. He uses the latest techniques based on
research. He never hurts me, and I've got all my teeth,
so when I ran into him the other day, I was eager to see
if he'd heard about the new state program. I knew he'd
think it was great.
"Did you hear about the new state program to measure the
effectiveness of dentists with their young patients?" I
said.
"No," he said. He didn't seem too thrilled. "How will
they do that?"
"It's quite simple," I said. "They will just count the
number of cavities each patient has at age 10, 14, and
18 and average that to determine a dentist's rating.
Dentists will be rated as Excellent, Good, Average, and
Below Average and Unsatisfactory. That way parents will
know which are the best dentists. It will also encourage
the less effective dentists to get better," I said.
"Poor dentists who don't improve could lose their
licenses to practice."
"That's terrible," he said.
"What? That's not a good attitude," I said. "Don't you
think we should try to improve children's dental health
in this state?"
"Sure I do," he said, "but that's not a fair way to
determine who is practicing good dentistry."
"Why not?" I said. "It makes perfect sense to me."
"Well, it's so obvious," he said. "Don't you see that
dentists don't all work with the same clientele; so much
depends on things we can't control? For example," he
said, "I work in a rural area with a high percentage of
patients from deprived homes, while some of my colleagues
work in upper middle class neighborhoods. Many of the
parents I work with don't bring their children to see me
until there is some kind of problem and I don't
get to do much preventive work. Also," he said, "many of
the parents I serve let their kids eat way too much candy
from an early age, unlike more educated parents who
understand the relationship between sugar and decay.
To top it all off," he added, "so many of my clients have
well water which is untreated and has no fluoride in it.
Do you have any idea how much difference early use of
fluoride can make?"
"It sounds like you're making excuses," I said. I
couldn't believe my dentist would be so defensive. He
does a great job.
"I am not!" he said. "My best patients are as good as
anyone's, my work is as good as anyone's, but my average
cavity count is going to be higher than a lot of other
dentists because I chose to work where I am needed
most."
"Don't get touchy," I said.
"Touchy?" he said. His face had turned red and from the
way he was clenching and unclenching his jaws, I was
afraid he was going to damage his teeth. "Try furious.
In a system like this, I will end up being rated average,
below average, or worse. "My more educated patients who
see these ratings may believe this so-called rating
actually is a measure of my ability and proficiency as a
dentist. They may leave me, and I'll be left with only
the most needy patients. And my cavity average score
will get even worse. On top of that, how will I attract
good dental hygienists and other excellent dentists to
my practice if it is labeled below average?"
"I think you are overreacting," I said. " 'Complaining,
excuse making and stonewalling won't improve dental
health'...I am quoting from a leading member of the DOC,"
I noted.
"What's the DOC?" he asked.
"It's the Dental Oversight Committee," I said, "a group
made up of mostly laypersons to make sure dentistry in
this state gets improved."
"Spare me," he said. "I can't believe this. Reasonable
people won't buy it," he said hopefully.
The program sounded reasonable to me, so I asked, "How
else would you measure good dentistry?"
"Come watch me work," he said. "Observe my processes."
"That's too complicated and time consuming," I said.
"Cavities are the bottom line, and you can't argue with
the bottom line. It's an absolute measure."
"That's what I'm afraid my parents and prospective
patients will think. This can't be happening," he said
despairingly.
"Now, now," I said, "don't despair. The state will help
you some."
"How?" he said.
"If you're rated poorly, they'll send a dentist who is
rated excellent to help straighten you out," I said
brightly.
"You mean," he said, "they'll send a dentist with a
wealthy clientele to show me how to work on severe
juvenile dental problems with which I have probably had
much more experience? Big help."
"There you go again." I said. "you aren't acting
professionally at all."
"You don't get it," he said. "Doing this would be like
grading schools and teachers on an average score on a
test of children's progress without regard to influences
outside the school, the home, the community served and
stuff like that. Why would they do something so unfair
to dentists? No one would ever think of doing that to
schools."
I just shook my head sadly, but he had brightened. "I'm
going to write my representatives and senator," he said.
"I'll use the school analogy-surely they will see the
point."
He walked off with that look of hope mixed with fear and
suppressed anger that I see in the mirror so often
lately.
An Email by
Marion Brady - List of Reasons
Why Merit Pay Won't Work:
________________________
From the farmhouse where I once lived, it was pretty much a straight
shot up
Ohio Route 14 to Lincoln Electric on the east side of Cleveland. Fifty
years
ago it was about an hour's drive.
Lincoln Electric manufactured electrical equipment, mostly electric
welders.
A neighbor, friend, and father of one of my students worked there. He
rarely
missed an opportunity to remind me that he made about three times more
money
assembling electric welders than I made teaching his daughter.
I knew the way to Lincoln Electric not because I was interested in
changing
jobs, but because I was talking to someone there about a project I
thought
could improve Southeast High School.
By just about any measure, Lincoln was progressive. In 1914 they created
an
Employee Advisory Board made up of elected representatives from every
department. In the next few years, long before most other companies,
everybody got free life insurance, paid vacations, stock ownership
plans,
bonuses for useful suggestions, automatic cost-of-living raises, and
continuous employment guarantees. During the worst years of the Great
Depression, average pay for employees more than doubled.
What particularly interested me about Lincoln, however, was the
company's
"Incentive Bonus" program. Simply put, the better job you did, the more
you
got paid.
Merit pay! I loved the idea! The agriculture teacher and I began an
effort,
blessed by the school board, to bring merit pay to Southeast High
School.
It was a real challenge. Every problem we solved seemed to create two or
three new problems. Month after month we talked about "the devil in the
details." Finally, notwithstanding how commonsensical the whole idea
seemed,
notwithstanding our initial enthusiasm, notwithstanding how "American"
the
project, we concluded that the gulf between manufacturing things and
teaching kids was unbridgeable. The devil wasn't in the details; the
devil
was in the fundamentals.
Here are some relevant facts - facts still true:
- Every kid is different. In industry, quality controls discard
unsatisfactory "raw material." Teachers have to work with whatever the
local
parent population produces - smart and slow, motivated and lazy, clever
and
clueless.
- Every class is different. Two classes of the same size, studying the
same
subject, in the same room, at the same time of day and year, will have
different "collective "personalities and have to be taught differently.
- Every subject is different. A performance evaluation for a band
director
won't work for a teacher helping kids learn how to give impromptu
speeches
in an English class, or analyze propaganda in a social studies class, or
study milk production on a local dairy farm in an agriculture class.
- Every teacher is different. Some come on like Marine drill sergeants,
others like Mary Poppins. Both approaches, and everything in between,
can
succeed for teachers who build on their strengths and minimize their
weaknesses. How a particular style works will be different for every
student, and the results may not be known for years.
- Every work environment is different. Some administrators treat
teachers as
professionals, encouraging independence, growth and creativity. Others
are
authoritarian and controlling, or even see teachers as the enemy. Not
surprisingly, teachers function differently in different environments.
- Every resource base differs. There's no standardization of the kinds
and
amounts of instructional tools and materials available, of monies for
supplies and enrichment activities, or for the ability and willingness
of
local volunteers to share their knowledge and experience.
That's six major variables affecting teacher performance, only one of
which
is controlled by the teacher.
I can think of no way to bulldoze all those variables into a level
playing
field for all teachers. In the more than 50 years since we tried and
failed,
I've never seen anyone else do it either. Twenty -two governors recently
agreed that merit pay is a great idea, and the governor of Texas went
home
and said Texas is going to put a plan in place. It'll be interesting to
watch what happens. A perception of unfairness is a sure-fire way to
destroy
a school system.
But even if some genius figures out how to do what my friend and I
couldn't
do, it won't solve the problem. Merit pay is based on an assumption
about
basic human nature, that money is the ultimate motivator.
The behavior of hundreds of teachers I've known says that isn't true.
Robert
Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, argues
persuasively
that creating quality is a deeper human drive. Sure, teachers want
enough to
live decently. But the teachers which readers should most want teaching
their kids and grandkids are those for whom quality work is more
important
than money. If the opportunity to achieve that is missing, raising
salaries
enough to keep teachers in the profession will trigger a tax revolt.