UGA prof: Merit pay could turn children into “producing” workforce coerced to create “profit margin” scores
Despite all the attention on this blog to merit pay, UGA professor Stephanie Jones asked a question that we have yet to consider: Would merit pay for teachers legislate 21st child labor?
I am running her piece on the Monday education page, but here is a preview. I liked her essay because it raised scenarios I had not considered. Here is the piece by Jones, an associate professor in the Department of Elementary and Social Studies Education at the University of Georgia:
In many places around the globe, young children toil in factories, harvest fruits and vegetables, clean houses, and perform other “jobs” we don’t want to imagine young children doing. This forced work in sweatshops, in factory farms, or in the illicit sex and drug trades is roundly condemned as “child labor.”
But what happens when you put about a million children in 1st through 8th grade classrooms across the state of Georgia and force them to work under conditions where their individual teacher’s salary will be determined by the children’s performance on a state standardized test or other metric? Is it Child Labor? Whom the children would be working for at that point – and what they would be working for – becomes unclear.
United States Child Labor activists in the early 1900s were concerned about children laboring in factories and fields from morning until night. They claimed that such labor eclipsed opportunities in childhood to be involved with both physical recreation and mental stimulation. In other words, the child was being exploited for the economic benefits of others while the child’s interests and well-being were outright neglected. Activists sought to end this practice and argued for a free, compulsory education for all children that – presumably – would not exploit children for the economic benefits of others. Child Labor laws made it illegal to work youth during traditional school hours for these reasons.
Today up to a million children in Georgia – all below the legal age limits for work – board a school bus before sunrise and can still be found slumping over “homework” well after nightfall. Physical recreation during school hours – that chunk of time during the day when it is illegal to “work” youth – has all but disappeared.
Child Labor activists in the U.S. were concerned about the physical health, emotional well-being, and intellectual pursuits of children. They saw the working conditions of child laborers as worse than unethical: long hours, no breaks, no recreation, and no space for rich intellectual endeavors were considered to undermine human potential and the long-term health of a larger society.
Ask a child how she spends her seven-plus hours of school each day and a similar list of unethical practices may be compiled.
Tell that child’s teacher that her salary will depend on the testing performance of that child and chart the negative consequences on children’s working conditions in schools. Teachers – workers in the system controlled by bosses above – will be exploited. Students – the “producing” workers in the system whose production of test scores will determine reward for those above them – will be exploited.
Business owners and supervisors worked children for long hours with no breaks and no recreation (and no choice in the matter) because they assumed they would benefit economically from the intensity of the child’s labor. Some may have recognized these practices as abusive, but the economic incentive was too seductive. What was best for children and their overall education and well-being was neglected under conditions of Child Labor. The neglect of children’s social, emotional, physical, academic needs inside schools where they spend most of their waking hours for most of their childhood is likely to become accepted practice under Merit Pay legislation linked to test scores.
How do we want adults in school to our children? Is it okay with parents if other adults look at our child and see them as potential “assets” for raising their salaries or potential “deficits” for lowering their salaries? What kind of pressure might a child feel when he learns that his teacher’s earnings are connected to his test scores?
How hard will a teacher push a child if she or he is trying to create a higher “profit margin” in test scores? Are we willing to sacrifice children and the rights they won through Child Labor laws in the early 1900s?
The focus in education has centered on big debates about teacher and school accountability for too long. These debates exclude children’s experiences of policy and the roles they are forced into every time new legislation passes. Putting our focus back on children has the potential to remind us who matters in these debates and the prices children are paying for adults’ thoughtless actions. Merit Pay linked to test scores is a move toward implementing a 21st century version of Child Labor. Multiple measures of success for children, teachers, and schools can put us back on track. Schools were not meant to be factories where children toil, indeed compulsory education for all was viewed as the antithesis of child labor. The ethical treatment of children should be a measure of success for teachers and schools, alongside multiple measures of children’s academic growth and overall well-being.
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64 comments Add your comment
R.P. McMurphy
November 1st, 2010
9:42 pm
.Aiken Faque says “…schools have little to no effective professional development programs.”
They are out there. The National Board Ceritfication comes to mind…but the powers that decided that any teacher that earned their Certification would no longer be compensated for their continued professional developement. This decision was legislated and had nothing to do with the Principal or what you deem a “leadership vacuum.” A teacher could also further their education by earning a Masters…but those same wise Legislators have taken away the pay supplement for that too. Take away any incentive to further your education and people will not further their education. This is not a Principal Problem either. The Principals are caught in between awful Superintendents handing down ridiculous rules to teachers that are increasingly poorly treated. I have a friend that earns less teaching now than they did 10 years ago. This is criminal. Couple huge paycuts with even more micromanagement of the classroom and you have and awful situation. I heard they can’t give Failing grades. Why even have grades at all then? This is a crazy situation where the very best teachers are considering other careers. Not because they don’t love what they do but because there is too little teaching and too much button pushing and CYA paperwork. d is right on the money.
Now to Merit Pay…Education has as much to do with parents as it does teachers. Bad parents yield bad students and vice versa. Now a teachers pay could be based in part on whether the students parents are involved. That does not seem fair. Furthermore Standardized test scores are higher at high performing schools which often are nestled in areas where the people are also high earners. So a teacher that works in a rich area of town will make more than a teacher in a poor area of town. That does not seem fair either.
I like this article because it looks at Merit Pay from a different perspective. Merit Pay would would destroy an already broken system.
Want your students to have good teachers? PAY THE TEACHERS MORE. Want your students’ teachers to be indifferent and disinterested? Want the best teachers you have to quit? Cut their pay further.
Ed Johnson
November 1st, 2010
10:31 pm
@Kwanza,
You might start with “The Case Against Competition,” here…
http://www.alfiekohn.org/parenting/tcac.htm
Then, just google “The Case Against Competition” for more.
For the sake of children you involve yourself with, especially those contenting with greatly less than ideal social and economic circumstances — I pray you will come to understand.
Private School Guy
November 2nd, 2010
6:10 am
There should be merit pays based on true merit. A good administrator should be able to recognize a bad teacher from a great teacher. They should be able to determine who makes the school a better school and pay them an incentive for doing so. In this nation we have retreated behind test scores because we are afraid to admit or define what really is good teaching.
Testing in the way it is done is madness and simply invalid and a waste of time for everyone involved aside from those profiting from the test sales. Superintendents need to be aware of what is going on in the schools and administrators need to be aware of what is going on in the classrooms and teachers need to give out valid grades that actually tell us something about the learning or lack of learning in the classroom. Until this is done we are stuck in an educational quagmire.
Watering Hole Blog
November 2nd, 2010
10:04 am
What an embarrassment for anyone who attended the University of Georgia. Teachers’ Unions are so scared that they will be paid based on performance that they demonize teachers raising the bar for their students via homework? None of my public schooling ever prepared me for the amount of homework and studying I had to do at UGA. If those teachers had raised the bar, maybe I would have been better prepared. Kids need to get used to more homework as time goes on or they will be blasted if they reach a level of higher education. A teacher’s job is to make sure as many of their students learn as much as possible. If you do not want to meet those requirements, maybe you should choose another career. @ d well Washington politicians who want to overtax businesses and then ask them to hire obviously know nothing about running a business. Businesspeople learn to adapt to different levels of government interference so they can stay afloat and maintain profit margins, rather than form unions and call it criminal. Sure, some businesspeople call taxes criminal, but they roll with the punches and raise their standards accordingly.
ConservaTarian
November 2nd, 2010
11:39 am
Are you kidding? If this is the best argument that Professor Jones can make in opposition to merit pay, I have serious concerns about HER critical reasoning ability. So, if I reward my kids with additional allowance for good grades. they are now working for me; right? Get real!
Grad student
November 2nd, 2010
11:44 am
http://www.edexcellence.net/flypaper/index.php/2010/11/merit-pay-and-homework-and-dickens/
Angie
November 2nd, 2010
11:57 am
While I think merit pay is not the answer (too many factors influence a child’s performance in the classroom), equating homework and performance in school to child labor is ridiculous. No child ever died because they had homework to complete after school. Children die every day because of forced labor.
Teachers do themselves a disservice by arguing the issue with silly, extreme examples like this. Many people who might understand and agree with their points dismiss them because of the silliness of the argument.
Jonathan Swift
November 2nd, 2010
1:59 pm
Instead of using Merit Pay for teachers to drive results…we should just eat the poorly performing students.
rlp122
November 2nd, 2010
2:19 pm
Wow. So many folks here totally missed the mark.
It’s not about the kids being forced into child labor. It’s not about a teachers ability. It’s about the way that the education system has been ran into the bureaucratic ground.
Anymore teachers aren’t allowed to teach. I hear my wife (a teacher) complain about this every week. She is forced to teach to standardized levels where she gets so little say in what the child learns, how they get taught, or how much time to spend on a subject. It’s push, push , push to get to the objectives and Lord help her if her and her fellow teachers don’t make to to a specific objective on a given date.
One teacher for 25 students is the norm now regardless of the level of the student. It’s impossible to take 25 students who can’t read at level and push them all to the passing level for each grade, Add that in to the lack of any “fun” activities in school anymore and it’s no wonder kids don’t want to engage. I remember having activities that boosted learning when I was in school. Now to get an activity approved it’s like pulling teeth. One administrator said to my wife; “We don’t have time for “fun”, we have to meet AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress).”
There is no more time after lunch for a bit of running and jumping. Nor are there 30 minute recesses where kids can work off excess energy. We treat kids in elementary school worse than you would treat most workers. At least the workers can quit and find a better job.
Go get a clue and sit in a classroom for a while. “d” said it all up front. The teachers don’t have any choices. The clueless keep blaming the teachers. Grow up and realize that the teachers want to teach. They are fettered by the government and the regulations that the State and
Federal Department of Education put on them. You can’t push knowledge into anyone. You have to make the person want to learn. If the person isn’t engaged and motivated, no amount of regulation is going to make it any better.
Get rid of the unions, remove the government from the education process and let the teachers do what they do best.
Zander46
November 2nd, 2010
3:31 pm
How INSANE!!!! Merit Pay would be the way to go, but the unions DO NOT WANT an EDUCATED POPULATION! They want to keep the kids stupid and dumb so they will keep voting DEMONRATS!!!
Man, our Country is going down the tubes!
Child Labor…. what a JOKE! I used to have so much homework that I never went outside!!!
Thanks TEACHERS for destroying the FUTURE!
The Stogs
November 2nd, 2010
4:24 pm
Education as exploitation? Put down the crack pipe UGA prof. What a lame comparison. Excellence and achievement should be the goal in education — by students and teachers alike. But the PC lack-of-intelligent-thought-process moved us beyond/below that.
So, teachers shouldn’t be accountable for results? Much like politicians I guess. Just another example of this country’s failing. Teachers, the administraton, students and yes, the students’ parents are all responsible. But just like students shouldn’t advance on the merits of having a pulse, teachers shouldn’t remain employed for just showing up and paying union (excuse me, association) dues.
Lafayette Education Association : LEA-IN.org » Blog Archive » Here’s a Disturbing Scenario.
November 3rd, 2010
10:29 am
[...] could turn children into “producing” workforce coerced to create “profit margin” scores uga-prof-merit-pay-could-turn-children-into-producing-workforce-coerced-to-create-profit-margin-scor… Classroom Topics, Topics of the Moment merit pay,profit,scores You can leave a response,or [...]
retired teacher
November 3rd, 2010
12:42 pm
If I were to teach again under a merit-pay system, I would insist that equitable conditions exist for evaluating my performance. I would require that my classroom be equipped exactly the same as every other classroom for the same grade level/subject in the state. I would need to have the same size classroom, the same technology, the same textbooks, and the same resources available. Next I would require that the demographics of the students/families represented in my class be identical to all others in the same grade/subject. The children would need to be distributed in a way so that their socio-economic circumstances would be the same. Their parents would have the same range of educational levels and IQs. The children would also be evenly distributed by IQ, learning differences, and disabilities. Should I keep going? How in the world can testing be a measurement of a teacher’s success with students? How can we measure success of a teacher who is dedicated to working in a high-risk school when her counterpart in a school in a wealthy and educated area has students who ace exams? Who is the better teacher? Who has a better “gene pool” represented? Merit pay is an impossible dream (nightmare).
Abandon merit pay for teachers and require principals to be highly-qualified, proactive leaders who can weed out poor teachers. Great leadership = great schools.
Laurie
November 5th, 2010
10:08 am
Our elementary school is 7 hours per day. The school bus (where kids have to remain seated and relatively quiet, for safety reasons) is another 60-90 minutes a day for those on it the longest. Add another 30 minutes per night for reading (which is usually by far the most important “homework” these kids can be doing). Now you’ve already got a 43-45 hour work week. For kids between 5 and 10 years old! I’ve worked jobs that required 90+ hours of work a week, but seriously, a 45-hour work week is more than the average ADULT works.
So why must homework (which is usually busy work, rarely individualized for particular students’ needs, material the teacher often spends no time creating (photocopying worksheets) and sometimes does not even glance at, much less review thoroughly) have to be added onto a 45-hour work week, for children age 5-10? When that happens, what do you think suffers? In our family (my kids are not usually allowed to watch TV or have other “screen time” on the week nights), it has been practicing piano, reading, family dinners, exercise and outdoor time (which is proven to help with academic learning), chores (which help to teach responsibility), down time (which my daughter would otherwise spend writing stories and award-winning poetry), family time in general (including time with her little sister, which teaches responsibility, fairness, negotiation skills, and will give her a friend for life), intellectual “projects” spontaneously created by parents (my daughter learned about place value and “base 2″ when she was in kindergarten because we were messing around with a set of light switches and decided to teach her). And SLEEP – which Americans tend to diss, but which is ABSOLUTELY PROVEN to be CRUCIAL to learning (as well as emotional control, and for that matter, safety – exhausted kids step out in front of cars, exhausted teenagers crash cars).
I knew something was wrong when I found myself telling my 3rd grader, “You have to put away that book [a 500+ page Harry Potter book with an 8th grade reading level in which she was engrossed], so that you can do the rest of your homework [writing spelling words over and over and doing "word searches" looking for the same, even though she'd gotten a 100% on the spelling pre-test - her spelling has always been excellent and her vocabulary has always been 6 grade levels ahead - probably because she reads so much]“!!!!