Fix our public schools or they'll be scrapped

Dana Goldstein offers up a fairly weak attack on merit pay for public schoolteachers:

Forty years of psychological research demonstrates that when someone is faced with a complex, creative task -- like teaching -- money is an ineffective motivational tool, and may even delay progress.

Reason 1 why this is weak: Teacher motivation and teacher recruitment/retention are two different things. Outsourced to Matt Yglesias:

I don’t think the idea is that ineffective teachers are going to suddenly will themselves into becoming great teachers in order to grab some incentive pay. The point is that if you’re employing a bunch of teachers, any of whom might depart in favor of employment elsewhere, you want to make sure that it’s your most effective teachers who are least likely to quit. And one way to do that is to make sure that it’s your most effective teachers—rather than simply your longest-serving ones—who are getting paid the most money.

Reason 2 why Goldstein's argument is weak: Merit pay isn't all about money. The money, as in so many jobs, is a proxy for respect and recognition for the hard work that teachers put into their jobs. As things stand, a teacher who pours his heart and soul into his lessons can expect no greater reward - now or ever! - than a teacher who half-asses the job. The message to to the hard-working teacher couldn't be clearer: "Your effort will not be recognized or rewarded." With a merit-based pay system, raises are more than cash in a teacher's wallet - they're a message that the system appreciates and rewards dedication, ingenuity, and effort.

Reason 3 why Goldstein's argument is weak: There's no good alternative. The system we now use - seniority-based pay - is so motivation-killing that Goldstein herself calls for it to be changed:

[O]ne key to professional motivation is making sure everyone is paid fairly at the outset, thus getting the issue of compensation "off the table." That suggests paying teachers more earlier on in their careers, instead of back-loading the reward system, as many current teacher contracts do.

Huh? So Goldstein is suggesting that, instead of getting raises based on seniority, teachers have flat salaries for their entire careers? That would be highly unlikely to work wonders for teacher motivation. And the fact that Goldstein is casting around for anything-but-merit-pay alternatives to the current system indicates that her dislike of merit pay is based more on principle than on a rational evaluation of the alternatives.

But I would like to point out that merit pay is only one of the big reforms that we need to improve our education system. Weakening (or elimination) of teacher tenure is another. Raising the standards for the teaching profession, a la Finland, is another; this must be coupled with across-the-board raises for teachers. Increased emphasis on literacy and math is also needed. And finally, discipline reform is key to reforming our poorest schools; this includes after-school programs, healthy cafeteria food, and other steps to minimize violence. We must reform our public schools. We must turn them into effective, results-based meritocracies.

Because the alternative is the Republican plan - to destroy the public school system altogether, and replace it with a church-based educational system supported by your tax dollars and mine. That's what voters will turn to if our schools continue and continue to fail. Current efforts by teacher-union hardliners to strangle public school reform in its crib are merely bringing us closer to that neo-medieval nightmare.

Update: Yglesias responds to those who label his position "teacher-bashing".

Update 2: Yglesias cites a study in India that found that merit pay had a big positive effect.

Update 3: Commenter Anoynmous asks: "How about merit-based rather than seniority-based tenure?" Merit-based tenure sounds good to me, as a complement to merit-based pay. After all, we don't want schools cutting costs in bad times by firing the best teachers!