Loss Aversion: Paying Teachers More and Less in the Wrong Direction

You may have heard of a recent suggestion for enticing teachers to find ways to raise test scores: give teachers money at the beginning of the year, and then take it away if their scores don't improve appropriately. Its academic name is "Loss Aversion." The idea is that people may work harder when an undesirable behavior might cause them to lose something they already have than if a desirable behavior might earn them something in the future.

This scheme has come recently to the public debate over education following a recently published study conducted on Chicago teachers, which was subsequently reported on in The Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal.

Educators have understandably reacted negatively to the suggestion that districts might do well to consider having teachers give back money. Nobody wants to do that. But protecting teachers' financial well-being is hardly the most dire concern for the public to take issue with here.

It is not troublesome that researchers in the field of economics would construct such a study, nor should it worry us that the findings suggest that humans might be more strongly motivated when confronted with the loss of something they already have than when offered a reward for something later on. The research represents a valid question we'd naturally like to answer, and the findings may help us understand human behavior better.

What is extraordinarily worrisome, however, are the conclusions audiences are likely to draw given the media's unbalanced coverage in favor of, and omission of critical scrutiny regarding, efforts to tinker with teacher pay and motivation. I hope to make clear why I believe the media too often fails in its coverage of this issue by discussing three of those conclusions below.

Inaccurate Conclusion Number 1: Standardized tests so accurately represent student learning and teacher effectiveness that their pitfalls deserve to be discussed only rarely, if ever. 

The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, a host of corporate-reform-minded bloggers, and, disappointingly, the study's authors report the findings as if 1) standardized test scores were synonymous with student achievement, and 2) improvements in standardized test scores were synonymous with teacher quality. Neither suggestion is accurate. Even so, the study's abstract strongly implies that they are, despite that the authors stand on no ground to make such a claim (they're all economists, none of whom have expertise in the nuances of standardized testing) and that the pitfalls of standardized testing have been extraordinarily well-documented (recently and strikingly here).

A datum point becomes less and less useful the further from it inferences are made. To make assumptions about teacher effectiveness, or even more outlandish, school effectiveness, is academically dishonest given a metric designed only to diagnose student knowledge (many of which are so poorly constructed, we often can't honestly claim to infer much from them at all). When test scores increase, that is all that can be said - test scores increased. Unless you are intimately familiar with the test, curriculum, and instruction; it would be irresponsible to make any inferences beyond that. As a teacher, I find it depressing that stories like this are reported so frequently with no acknowledgement of the pitfalls of standardized testing. This misunderstanding is at the root of most of our failed education policies.

Inaccurate Conclusion Number 2: There are more benefits than costs to toying with teachers' compensation schemes.

By paying such attention to the Chicago study, the media implies that there are more benefits than costs to treating teachers like you train a dog, or a lazy teenager. Give them treats when they perform well and negative consequences when they don't do what you want.

Much of the dialogue around these policies assumes teachers have no intrinsic motivation to do well, or that extrinsic monetary motivation is the only kind that really makes a difference. Some research suggests that a person's efficacy at engaging in a cognitively complex task (like teaching) is not aided (and may be harmed) when rewards and punishments are added.

Teachers enter the profession to feel as if they have purpose, and they generally value respect and support over pay. Looking for ways to monetarily reward those who raise test scores abuses this reality in two ways: 1) it disrespects teachers (remember - the opposite of the external motivator they want) by implying they need monetary motivation for their work to improve (and suggests that, because they need that, their work is more akin to unskilled labor than a profession), and 2) it overlooks the external rewards good teachers actually value: professional collaboration and development, recognition, and appreciation.

Diane Ravitch suggests that if we're going to threaten to take away teachers money, why not go further? Why not threaten to cut off their fingers? And the blogger at Accountable Talk notes that thousands of teachers are already threatened with the loss of something much greater for failing to boost test scores: their jobs.

It seems to me that the notion that teachers ought to be treated like lazy teenagers comes from a good many people's previous experience with either a bad teacher or bad public employee. And, to be sure, those people exist in the teaching profession. I don't know how many of them there are, or if there are more now than ten years ago, but I do know that I've only worked alongside a handful in the five schools in which I've taught, and proceeding with efforts focused on toying with teachers' pay as a means of improving instruction will leave us with more of those types than less. Those teachers who are excellent, intelligent, and show great promise are among the many currently leaving in droves. They feel disrespected, hampered, and as if they have little control over a sketchy metric that will ultimately decide their pay, and possibly their career. If tying rewards (that teachers don't want) and punishments to indicators that force teachers to abandon creativity and autonomy relieve us of the absolute worst, they will also purge the good and the best.

Inaccurate Conclusion Number 3: Improving Teacher Quality is the Same as Improving Public Education.

When the media writes about the need to improve teacher quality as if it were synonymous with improving public education generally, it corrodes the public's understanding of the factors that go into creating an excellent educational system.

Even if we are to believe that toying with compensation schemes might improve instruction, our failure to provide educational equity (i.e. the existence of the "achievement gap") is dependent on far more than quality of instruction. The media's love affair with improving teacher quality as a means of improving public education amounts to focusing on a few hundred gallons in a problem the size of the Pacific - or obsessing over a few square inches of art on the mural in the Sistine Chapel.

Listening to the media and economists salivate over new ideas that might force teachers to work harder makes the word "curriculum" seem quaint and esoteric, as if it plays only an infinitesimally minor, and most certainly boring, role in improving education. It ignores (and contributes to) the reason the teaching profession earned a reputation for having fewer extremely bright and motivated professionals in the first place: our culture's general lack of respect for the job. It denies that class size, experienced staff, and access to up-to-date technology matter. And it allows us to remain blissfully unaware of (or at least inattentive toward) some of our society's most insidious and noxious troubles.

The ultimate problem with our educational system is not that we don't have great educators, or that we don't know how to "do education" well. It is that our system is catastrophically inequitable. Our richest students generally perform outstandingly in state and international tests, graduate high school and are accepted to college at high rates, and go on to earn lucrative jobs. The opposite is too often true for poor and minority students.

The United States bears the shame of having the highest rate of child poverty in the industrialized world and sending more black men to prison than to college. Our schools and communities are largely segregated by race and socio-economic standing. We have an increasing rate of income inequality. And we incarcerate a larger percentage of our population than any country in the world. These realities affect student achievement.

Despite our problems, I will most certainly grant that, save a complete cultural course alteration in the next five to ten years, we are still tasked with improving educational outcomes in the country we have, rather than the country we wish we had. But even that will remain a pipe dream if we're unable to move off our fixation for berating teachers until students give us the scores we want and engage in a dialogue that is indicative of a more nuanced and holistic understanding of what public education is, what it's for, and the factors that make it work.

I'm nearly done, but I don't want to leave you wanting for a counter solution. Were I asked to test my own aversion for loss, I'd suggest that instead of offering me the $4,000-$8,000 researchers gave teachers in the Chicago study, they use that money to buy my classroom the textbooks and basic materials we don't already have. Then, upon the study's completion, they could take the materials back, whether students scores improved or not! Better, they could feel free to do the same the following year, and the following, and the following...