Kohn begins with the case of denial that American policy makers usually find themselves in. They want good teachers for all schools everywhere; they are unwilling to pay the general wage increases or truly address the underlying reasons for a shortage of quality teachers while they look for extrinsic rewards for the gaps they perceive in the teacher supply and refuse to address the intrinsic motivations to teach because they imply a loss of control for policy makers.

We know that incredible numbers of trained teacher leave during their first five years. Interestingly those who think charter schools are the answer need to deal with the fact that young teachers leave charter schools at 230 times the rate that they leave public schools.

Policy makers, politicians and senior administrators, refuse to do what it really takes to recruit and retain good teachers because, at its core, it is a power struggle. Policy makers insist on increasingly scripting the classroom teaching situation with ‘Teacher Performance Review’ systems, control the curriculum through standardized testing, and ‘outcomes’ and infantilize teachers and undermine their professionalism by insisting that they do yard duty, hall patrols and break up bun fights in the cafeteria instead of spending their time on professional activities. What policy makers don’t get is that it is exactly this lack of control and lack of opportunity for professionalism that alienates teachers and causes them to quit early, retire early, or quit trying to implement their creativity in the classroom, go through the motions imposed by administration and seek to scratch their creative itch outside the classroom.

Kohn reports a study by Public Agenda which asked 900 students why they chose not to teach. The primary reason “unreasonable standards and accountability”. A survey in Phi Delta Kappan the dominant journal in education, based on why teachers left the field – “accountability”. An examination by the BBC of the “recruitment crisis” in the UK by Mike Baker concluded “new accountability measures undermine teachers’ autonomy.”

Each time some new brain-dead policy maker recommends merit pay for teachers, they do it with all the enthusiasm of someone who believes it is a brand new idea. Kohn says the merit pay crowd suffers from both amnesia and myopia. “We have over a century of incentive plans implemented and then abandoned yet proponents never seem to give up on the plans.”

Education historians David Tyack and Larry Cuban conclude, “The history of performance based salary plans are a merry-go-round where plans are embraced and then dropped after a brief trial.” “Repeated experiences don’t seem to stop officials from proposing them again and again.”

Kohn says “who proposes these plans, conservatives, economists and especially conservative economists.” Public Interest a very right wing journal investigated merit pay and reluctantly reported in 1985 “there is no evidence supporting the idea that merit pay had any appreciable or consistent positive effect on teacher classroom work.”

Kohn, looking at the evidence, lists the reasons why merit pay plans for teachers (and many others) don’t work.

Control: Merit pay moves accountability away from politicians and administrators where it belongs to the workers where it does not belong.

Strained Relationships: In many jurisdictions, teachers are unanimous or nearly unanimous in opposition to merit pay plans even though some might benefit. They know that everybody loses when educators are pitted against each other. Even school wide incentive plans where the merit pay is shared by all if the school improves scores tends to lead to witch hunts and scape goats if the school fails to hit targets.

Motives: Merit plans begin with the notion that workers are not working hard enough now. Teachers and other workers find this insulting and inaccurate from the get go. The plans are based on discredited Behaviourist thinking. Teachers, after all are the university educated people who deliberately chose not to go into more lucrative fields at the beginning of their careers. As intrinsically motivated workers they are especially immune to merit pay plans. The use of extrinsic motivations has actually proven to reduce intrinsic motivation.

Measurement Issues: It seems right from the start the BC Liberal Party has dumped the problem on The Learning Roundtable. Good luck with that. Even Edwards Deming, the father of Total Quality Management (TQM) points out that “the most important things cannot be measured.” If Houston is any example, merit pay plans leads to years of endless bickering and recrimination. It leads to cheating, gaming and teaching to the test.

In the end, these idiotic plans stem from people in positions of power having no real background in education. We may soon have a teacher remuneration system designed by the people who designed the bonus system for Wall Street.

Policy makers need to wrestle with the following conundrum. Merit pay, standardized testing, teacher performance accountability schemes, attacks on teacher autonomy, use of teachers for non-professional chores, and general lack of respect for teachers is what drives good teachers out of the profession and demoralizes the remainder to the point that their alienation is highly counterproductive to a positive learning environment. Is there an answer? Yes, begin to train new teachers like Finland, with very high levels of teacher education, Finland demands at least one Masters Degree, many have two. Teachers are recruited from the top 10% of university students. After that, return decision making to classroom teachers and quit second guessing them at every turn. There is only so much power and influence to go around in education. If policy makers want to take the power and control that teachers have over classroom practice, and their work life away from them they simply will not have enough good teachers. It is as simple as that.