By: Adam W. Jordan, Ph.D.

Walter Parker (2003) warned us of the danger that idiocy poses to democracy and unity. Before jumping to conclusions, let me explain. Parker stated, “‘Idiotic’ in its origin is not what it means to us today- stupid or mentally deficient. This recent meaning is entirely and deservedly out of usage by educators, but the original meaning needs to be reclaimed. It is an ancient Greek term that shares with ‘idiom’ and ‘idiosyncratic’ the root idios, which means private, separate, self-centered- selfish” (p. 2).

Recently, an “idiotic” idea has emerged in public education. This idea centers on the notion that performance pay for public school teachers would serve as a unifying strategy to promote better “performance” from both students and teachers. In most states, teachers typically receive pay raises based on two variables: time spent devoted to the field and highest degree earned. This is not universally true. North Carolina, for example, has done away with pay for advanced degrees and they’ve watched countless educators leave the state as a result. But, this is a general approach to teacher pay. At the heart of the pay for performance argument is the assumption that teachers gain no benefit from pursuing higher education beyond initial certification at the bachelor’s degree level. Well, at least no benefit that translates to student performance as measured through standardized testing.

Before I get too far, let me say that I am not anti-testing. When testing is ethical, purpose-driven, psychometrically sound, and done with the intention of supporting a child I have no problem using testing as an assessment measure. However, considering the current idolization of the standardized test score as a political platform, I’d say we have long left behind the needs of children for the incessant need to compete, rank, and simplify.

There are many reasons why teacher pay for performance is a terrible idea, but perhaps the most prominent is the fact that teacher evaluation is much more complicated than most folks would like to believe. In my home state of Georgia teachers are currently evaluated with a combination approach through a system called the Teacher Keys Effectiveness System (TKES). Under TKES, part of teacher evaluation involves multiple administrative observations that monitor compliance with pre-determined standards as well as input from student surveys. For tested subjects, another piece of the evaluation includes what is lovingly referred to as a “growth model.” Basically, teachers are evaluated on how much they can influence a student’s standardized test score. This type of evaluation is essentially what is known as a Values Added Model, or VAM. While that may seem fair enough, the American Statistical Association (ASA) has warned that basing teacher evaluation on values added models is just not smart. According to the ASA (2014), studies that look at these models have typically found that “teachers account for about 1% to 14% of the variability in test scores” (p. 2). If that math seems ridiculous to you, thank a teacher. It turns out there are other obvious variables that play a large part in attempting to explain test score variability, such as ability status, socioeconomic status, and a host of other variables that are more than obvious to anyone who has spent any time in a public school classroom.

So, frankly, the first and most obvious argument against teacher pay for performance is that performance is not so easily measured.

However, as a teacher educator, this issue goes much deeper than statistical reasoning in my mind. For me, this issue goes right back to the idiocy that Walter Parker has warned us about. As a whole, we are becoming selfish and disjointed in public education. We are proposing ideas that are capitalistic and competition driven. Students are becoming products to be assessed for quality assurance in order for us to receive the praise we believe we deserve. Here is the kicker, though… That “we” certainly doesn’t describe too many teachers that I know. It sure does, however, represent the mainstream view of the policies that are governing us.

With the conversation of teacher pay for performance comes the obvious co-conversation that graduate degrees don’t amount to much in education. Under this view there isn’t much value placed on engaging in critical reflection, developing global citizenship, considering education as a human right, addressing racist issues head on, closing the Opportunity Gap, or promoting inclusive education. All of those things are at the heart of a graduate degree in education. It is a fair assumption to say that graduate degrees are not test-centric. It turns out there aren’t too many people that go in to education so that their students can all score in the 99th percentile on whatever standardized test is thrown their way. If you ask most teacher candidates why they want to teach the response is usually, “I care about children and want to make a difference.” Sounds good to me. In fact, therein lies one advantage of a quality graduate education. As most teachers are naturally focused on the emotional well-being of students, a graduate education has the potential to draw on that important value and continue to develop the promotion of academic and intellectual student development. Just as we strive to educate the whole-child, does the notion of a whole-person vanish upon the reception of a bachelor’s degree? Hardly. Good teachers want to do whatever is necessary to support whole-students.

Why, then, don’t we start supporting teachers devoted to whole-student education? In the ever growing effort to rank and sort we are losing sight of the merits of a quality education. If we continue to rank and sort then teachers will become the performers they are expected to become. Instead, what if we looked deeper at what it means to teach and save the performances for Hollywood? By supporting student-centered teachers both in formal university education programs as well as within school communities a culture shift may soon follow that makes a performance-centric conversation unnecessary. Support the teachers that are creating thinkers, innovators, citizens, neighbors, entrepreneurs, activists, and peacemakers. Those fruits are much sweeter than the 99th percentile. When we support student-centered teachers we will begin to see student-centered teaching as the norm. If we promote cut-throat, test-driven teaching, well, that will become the norm. We have a choice. There is still time. As a citizenry, we are selling ourselves short if we continue to focus on our incoherent demands to see teachers produce standardized performers.

If we continue to push for measures that compare, rank, and sort instead of fostering reflective, learner-centered collaboration we are destined to become “idiots.” When conversations of teacher performance pay and the uselessness of a graduate education become reasonable topics we should stop and think about how selfish we are becoming. When our conversations place students as outside variables to be measured we are becoming self-centered and not learner-centered. When we communicate to our teachers that we care only about the test scores they can produce and not the development of the democratic focused global citizens we need, we are in serious trouble.

It is time for a learner-centered revolution in public education. As learner-focused educators we have to stand up, speak our voice, and let it be known that we place the well-being of our students above all and we are committed to stand against any measures that would endanger their opportunities. Let’s let it be known that we won’t stand for our schools, our profession, or our very selves being turned into capitalistic cogs in the educational machine so many are attempting to build.

Adam W. Jordan is an assistant professor of special education at The University of North Georgia where his research interests include educational alternatives and learner-centered education. He taught in a public alternative school in Siler City, NC with wonderful, diverse, tenacious children. He can be contacted at adam.jordan@ung.edu