It’s a pretty basic idea, very American, don’t you think, to reward merit with extra pay?  Who could possibly be opposed?  The NEA, for one.  (You knew that, of course, but Mike Antonucci pegs it in “NEA on Merit Pay, Without the Sugar Coating“.)

But here’s another reason to be opposed.  “Merit pay” will translate into extra pay, but for very little merit;  it’s unlikely that there will be any real value there.

How can we be so certain?  After all it hasn’t really happened yet, not as a matter of federal policy.

Here’s why it won’t work.  The President suggested (”President Obama’s Remarks to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce“, NYT, 3/10) that it will be administered by teachers.  In any case, teachers and people who came up as teachers (i.e., administrators) will make the decisions.  How tough are they going to be on their peers?

As well, the Congress that will need to create legislation enabling a system of merit pay has very recently (and not surprisingly) shown itself to either agree with the NEA, or at least be loath to stand up to it; look what they did to charters in D.C*.  They may mouth allegiance to the merit pay idea, but it’s more than certain they’ll find a way to gut the implementation. Another “bold new idea” bites the dust!

(Images from Glenn Baxter, The Impending Gleam, 1982)

*2. That is the provision in the Omnibus legislation that strips funding for 1,700 poor and minority students in Washington, DC who receive federal aid to attend private schools. The DC Opportunity Scholarship program died in the Senate last night with the Omnibus vote, despite DC Superintendent Michelle Rhee supporting it and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stating he would like to see the students in that program stay in it. Keep in mind, the Opportunity Scholarship program currently helps two students attend Sidwell Friends School, where Barack and Michelle Obama send their two daughters, so it now looks like Sasha and Malia will have two less school mates in 2010 as a result of the vote yesterday. As Virginia Walden Ford said: “I’d like to see a reporter stand up at one of those nationally televised press conferences and ask President Obama what he thinks about what his own party is doing to keep two innocent kids from attending the same school where he sends his.”

Only three Democrats voted to keep the Scholarships funded: Robert Byrd, Mark Warner, and Joe Lieberman. Mike Crapo, Arlen Specter, and Olympia Snowe joined the rest of the Democrats in killing the program.

This program is so popular that there’s only one slot for every four that apply, and it costs the federal government less than 15 million dollars (a drop in the bucket compared to the 7.7 billion dollars in earmarks approved last night).
– Nota Bennett (Bill Bennett) 3/11