Conventional Wisdom and Performance-Based Pay

The conventional wisdom about performance-based pay for teachers is that it cannot work. The conventional wisdom about performance-based pay for teachers is that it can work and should be tried. How can both of these statements be true? The first statement refers to conventional wisdom among educators and the second to conventional wisdom among the general public.

Many educators believe that a fair and effective system for identifying and monetarily rewarding the best teachers is impossible to achieve. Most of the public believes such a system is clearly achievable and would have obvious benefits. The story of performance-based pay in Fairfax County Public Schools and throughout the nation is largely the story of the struggle between these two versions of conventional wisdom.

As in most cases of conventional wisdom, neither the public nor the educators are entirely right or wrong. While the public is right to believe it is both desirable and possible to have performance-based pay, they are wrong if they think it is easy to identify fairly and credibly the teachers worthy of such recognition. While the education community is wrong to believe that performance-based pay cannot be fair and workable, they are right that there are many difficulties to be overcome if a viable performance-based pay system is to be developed and instituted.

Fairfax County's experience with comprehensive and rigorous teacher performance evaluation and performance-based pay proves that developing and implementing such a program is both possible and contentious. Our Teacher Performance Evaluation Program was initiated in 1986-87 and has been implemented successfully and adjusted ever since. We have eliminated more than 500 ineffective teachers and helped hundreds more to become effective through the use of peer intervention teams.

We also have had experience with monetarily rewarding our exemplary teachers, but this element has a stormier history than the basic Teacher Performance Evaluation Program. A bonus system for exemplary teachers was tied to TPEP from the beginning, but this system required an opt-in by individual teachers and, therefore, did not apply to the performance of all teachers. This earlier bonus system was suspended and then eliminated by the school board in 1992.

Earlier this year, the school board adopted a new performance-based pay system to begin in the current school year. The new system reflects the school board's belief that the public is solidly behind performance-based pay that applies to all teachers and that decisions about performance-based pay can be fair and credible if based on a fair and credible evaluation system.

Our evaluation system provides the foundation on which performance-based rests. Everyone involved, including teachers' associations, recognize the quality and value of TPEP and the value of identifying and dealing with marginal and ineffective teachers. No good teacher wants to work with teachers who demean the profession, and good teachers will support a system for credibly identifying such teachers and either getting them out of the profession or ensuring their performance improves to effective levels.

The Fairfax County School Board, and most of those we represent, believe that recognition and reward of the very best teachers is a corollary to getting rid of the worst, even though some educators seem to disagree. In any case, demands from the public increasingly will force educational leaders throughout the nation to consider ways to financially reward their best teachers. Our school district's experience and determination to pay for performance can provide a model for school systems as they seek to meet this demand.

Is performance-based pay a viable option? Absolutely. Can it be successful? Our experience shows it can. In Fairfax County we not only believe it is possible, we believe it is the wave of the future. We also believe that real education reform requires that school boards be willing to risk some unconventional thinking.

Gary Jones served as undersecretary in the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan administration.

COPYRIGHT 1994 American Association of School Administrators
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group