McCain, Merit Pay & Education

Jumping off the front page of The Wall Street Journal Thursday reads the following headline: McCain Outlines His Education Plan…. The sum and substance of this plan is pretty much the same as what Republicans have been saying ad nauseam for the past several years, to wit: there should be merit pay and a publicly funded voucher system. To the second I say no way. Strengthen the public schools. Don’t destroy them. The issue of merit pay, however, is a tad more complicated. Having served in public education for over 30 years, I will be the first to say that in all of my years I have known my share of colleagues who were quite simply not getting it done and it annoyed me a lot that they were making as much as me who was getting it done. And yet, I can’t support McCain’s program for merit pay because the whole thing is tied to test scores. Here’s the theory the Republicans love to put forward: Education is a business. As in all businesses, your compensation is based on your performance, right? Therefore it follows that if you perform satisfactorily (according to test scores), you’ll be justly compensated. If you believe that, I've got some property in New Orleans I'd like to sell you. Here’s the problem: The basic premise is wrong. That’s not at all how it works in the private sector. Think of all the people you know who were forced into retirement or who otherwise got shafted by their companies for reasons entirely different from performance-poor or otherwise. So let’s cut the bull and tell the truth. Second, the reason why merit pay won’t work is because there are certain significant segments of our society who simply do not value education. What’s a teacher supposed to do about that? Is that in his/her control? On top of that what about the significant number of students who don’t or barely speak English? Do you seriously expect them to be able to pass a test? Look, there’s no question there are people who simply do not belong in a classroom. Fine. Get rid of them. Fire their butts and let them work at McDonald’s. Then, those who are left can continue to do the fine job they’re doing for however much the pay scale they’re on dictates.
Like much of what we’ve heard from McCain, his ideas are poorly thought out and overly simplistic. He is more interested in pandering to the republican base than finding genuine solutions to complicated problems.