Bettendorf HW/WH Goals Neg

We negate the resolution, that merit pay based on student achievement should be a significant
component of K-12 teacher compensation in United States public schools. 
To clarify we define:
Achievement as the “Ability to demonstrate accomplishment of some outcome for which
learning experiences were designed.”
Significant as “fairly large”
The goals of US public schools can be reasonably inferred to be that teachers should help
students in their education as a whole and encourage civic duty. We should thus demonstrate
whether or not merit pay based on student achievement could help these goals.
The thesis of the negative case is that merit pay based on student achievement creates
undesirable consequences that would undermine the goals of US public schools.
We offer [three/four] points:
First, merit pay creates economic inefficiencies and free riding. Second, gains in performance
may not be the result of teachers or even better students. Third, merit pay systems encourage
teachers and adminstrators to push out stuents. [Fourth, the merit pay system is arbitrary for
elementary grades.
Our first contention is that bonuses based on student achievement don’t work, and that school-
wide benefits creates free-riding inefficiencies.
Marigee Bacolod, from the National Bureau of Economic Research, writes in March 2009:
Despite the increase, we find little measurable improvement in standard metrics of achievement, such as
exam performance, for those schools that received the award compared to those schools that did not receive the award. This is perhaps not surprising, as Project STAR, which increased
resources by about 50%, yielded improvements in exam performance of less than a quarter of a standard deviation (Schanzenbach 2006). Moreover, because the resources from
California’s program are more akin to a random shock than a guaranteed income stream, schools may not have been able to incorporate them into projects that determine educational
achievement. However, we also find no increase in “capital expenditures,” such as computers or internet connections, which should be more responsive to a one-time shock.

It is also possible that the instability in the funding of the program weakened its incentives and failed to act as a strong signal of reward for teacher and school administrator effort.

Because the awards ended up being distributed mostly as bonuses to teachers (and possibly support staff as
well) in an effective school regardless of their individual contribution, the group-based

incentives in the GPAP can also have the free rider problem. The free rider problem could give rise
to teachers no longer exerting as much effort after award receipt, in the period when we evaluate the schools.

Our estimates show that accountability “on the cheap” had no significant impact across schools that
won awards versus those that didn’t. On the other hand, we cannot assess if the program would have a significant impact if implemented in
conjunction with other reforms, such as reduced class sizes or raising teacher salaries.32 This also leaves the question of whether the competition for the awards itself raised student

, a comparison of 1996-2000 4th and 8th grade Math NAEP

achievement across all schools in California. However

scores shows California declined or performed the same as the rest of the country during this
period.

If an entire school is rewarded on student performance, than teachers who didn’t help get
compensated when they don’t deserve it, creating a free-riding problem that encourages not
exerting effort to help students.

Our second contention is that gains in performance may not correlate with student improvement
Bettendorf HW/WH Goals Neg

or better teacher instruction.

Thomas Kane, from the National Bureau of Economic Research, writes in March 2001:
The estimation technique we use to decompose the variance in school-level test scores also yielded a number of substantive implications. First, one must be cautious in using gain scores
in an accountability framework, whether one is evaluating schools or teachers. There is much less signal variation and relatively more variation due to non-persistent factors in gain scores

Moreover, the gain any teacher is likely to achieve with his or her students
than in test score levels.

seems to depend upon the quality of instruction provided in the previous year. Large (or small)
gains one year tend to be followed by small (or large) gains in the next year. Also, the schools that
achieve impressive gains in one grade may not achieve impressive gains in other grades. In other
words, one should not evaluate a school based upon the gains in any particular grade level. Although gain scores are often touted as better

indicators of “value-added” by a school, their usefulness will be quite limited without the filtering technique
we propose.

He continues:

Second , we found little evidence that schools with substantial improvements in test performance
over time improved on any measures of student engagement. Although homework and TV watching were strongly related to
math test score gains in 5th grade in the base year (1994), there was no evidence that the schools with the greatest

improvements in performance after 1994 exhibited improvement on any of these other dimensions.
Such results would be consistent with the hypothesis that schools began tailoring their
curricula to improve performance on the tests, without generating similar improvements on other
measures.

If student performance bears little relation to a current teacher’s efficacy or even real educational
improvement, then we should not give out merit pay simply because merit has not been earned
even when it appears to have been.

Our third and final contention is that teachers will game the merit pay system by forcing students
to drop out.

David Figlio, and Lawrence Getzler, of the National Bureau of Economic Research write in
October 2002.
a Virginia school district superintendent
Schools may even be less inclined to discourage poorer students from dropping out. For example,

said that the state’s accountability exam system “actually encourages higher dropout rates …
It is actually to the school’s advantage to drop slow learners and borderline students from the
school, because they are usually poor test-takers.” (Borja, 1999) In part because of the newness of school accountability systems, we know
of few attempts to seriously quantify school responses to these incentives.1

An unnerving consequence, school administrators and teachers would be encouraged to convince

the poorest performing students to drop out, raising overall student scores and increasing merit
pay for teachers. Any program that would encourage such a practice would be directly
undermining the goals of US public schools.

[Finally, merit based on student performance in grades such as kindergarten are limited moreso
by student capability than in high school. The age of the student is influential on his mental and
physical capabilities at such a young age, and thus teachers should not be disenfranchised by a
system that is arbitrary.] And so, you negate.