There are several reasons, but the most important coincidentally relates to health care reform. In a recent New Yorker article Obama is supposed to have read very closely (The Cost Conundrum, June 1, 2009) Atul Gawande examines why health care providers vary so much in terms of cost and quality and why cost and quality often aren’t related. Late in the article Gawande turns to the Mayo Clinic as a model of topflight efficiency and quality.
“It’s not easy,” he (a Mayo administrator) said. But decades ago Mayo recognized that the first thing it needed to do was eliminate the financial barriers. It pooled all the money the doctors and the hospital system received and began paying everyone a salary, so that the doctors’ goal in patient care couldn’t be increasing their income. Mayo promoted leaders who focussed first on what was best for patients, and then on how to make this financially possible. No one there actually intends to do fewer expensive scans and procedures than is done elsewhere in the country. The aim is to raise quality and to help doctors and other staff members work as a team. But, almost by happenstance, the result has been lower costs. “When doctors put their heads together in a room, when they share expertise, you get more thinking and less testing,” Cortese told me.”
Here’s the public schooling parallel. “The aim is to raise quality and to help teachers and other staff members work as a team. . . . When teachers put their heads together in a room, when they share expertise, you get improved teaching and learning.”
So Arne, in your vision, will merit-based pay decisions be made on a teacher-by-teacher basis? If salary allocation is a zer0-sum game, and I’m a teacher who is excelling, why would I share my most successful materials, my most effective teaching strategies, my best insights with my colleagues? The answer, of course is, I wouldn’t. And so how will teachers who have beat a permanent retreat to their respective classrooms, create improved academic achievement?
The runner up problem is hypocrisy. Arne, is your salary merit-based? What about Obama’s? The members of Congress? District superintendents? Principals? What about the CEO’s who have seen their salaries and pensions skyrocket at the same time their company stock has fallen? What about the 80-90% of people’s who are not commission-based salespeople? If merit-based pay is so good for the goose, what about the gander?
Pressing Pause 