Reply #2: Mitt Romney and Richard Nixon support merit pay

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==By Vivian Troen and Katherine C. Boles | September 28, 2005

GOVERNOR MITT Romney, proving the axiom that no bad idea stays dead forever, has proposed a merit pay scheme for teachers that pretends to be a bold new initiative for education reform. While it may be bold, it is far from new. If implemented, it is destined to be an expensive failure.


The idea of merit pay, sometimes called pay for performance, was born in England around 1710. Teachers' salaries were based on their students' test scores on examinations in reading, writing, and arithmetic. The result was that teachers and administrators became obsessed with financial rewards and punishments, and curriculums were narrowed to include only the testable basics.

So drawing, science, and music disappeared. Teaching became more mechanical as teachers found that drill and rote repetition produced the ''best" results. Both teachers and administrators were tempted to falsify results, and many did. The plan was ultimately dropped, signaling the fate of every merit plan initiative ever since.

Nonetheless, merit pay plans of all kinds continue to resurface, since the paucity of new ideas in public education narrows the thinking of policymakers and sooner or later propels all old plans to the front, regardless of their sad history. In 1969, President Richard Nixon championed a plan he called ''performance contracting," in which it soon became apparent that financial incentives not only failed to produce expected gains but also generated damaging educational practices such as falsifying school records and teaching to the test to boost scores artificially. The inability of contractors to develop innovative teaching strategies and the dismal results of the program eventually doomed performance contracting, and it was declared a failure. So much for learning from history.==

http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2005/09/28/how_merit_pay_squelches_teaching/