In a New York minute, everything can change
In a New York minute, things get pretty strange

Recorded in 1989 by the lead singer of the Eagles, Don Henley, these words have new meaning 18 years later as new details are unveiled about the big apple's pay-for-performance bonus plan for teachers.

I first wrote about the plan and its announcement last week in generally positive terms, as few details had been released about it at the time. But the NY Times came through with this article on Thursday and this article Friday, with each write-up shedding new light on the plan, its details, its potential impact on students.

The first thing to observe is that those reformers looking for an inevitable sea change in the inner-city teacher labor market are bound for disappointment. The size of the bonuses that will be handed out in the 200 voluntarily participating schools will average out at $3,000, with individual bonuses unlikely to exceed five figures for even the most outstanding individual performers. The reason for this is that the plan gives in heavily to the teachers unions, which sought to create a bonus system that awards collaborative teaching and school-wide success as opposed to individual excellence. As such, individual compensation committees (in which half the members will be teachers) at the school will choose to divide up the money as they see fit--either evenly among the whole school, or giving slightly more to higher performers. My guess is that the vast majority of these committees decide to give most teachers in their school a very similar sized bonus. As human beings we don't like stepping on toes (especially when money is involved), and a people-based decision system for doling out the bonuses is likely to prize workplace morale over any real notion of meritocracy.

As a teacher, I have seen first-hand how important it is to recognize the collaborative element to teaching. If one member of my 8th grade teaching team fails to carry his weight, the rest of the team does suffer to a degree. So a second observation is that if an entire team of teachers stands to gain or lose a bonus because of the one struggling teacher, perhaps this reform may encourage teachers to turn on their less-than-stellar colleagues. In a field where too many of us are less than adequate at our jobs, this may be a good thing after all.

But the bottom line is this: if we want to use teacher pay as a way to encourage more and better teachers to relocate to the schools serving children in greatest need, a $3,000 bonus is unlikely to inspire a dramatic shift. My 11th grade English teacher once mentioned to me that "when you praise all, you praise none." Giving all of the teachers in a low-performing inner-city school a small bonus may get them to work harder... or it may just pay them more for doing the same work. But this much is for sure: until it pays the top 5% or 3% of the city's teachers a sizable amount more--on the order of five figures--New York's reform won't be powerful enough to change everything in a minute.