Barnett Berry of the Center for Teaching Quality offered another thoughtful essay about values of teacher performance pay.He explains why he thinks public policy makers should give priority to recommendations for merit pay by an aggregate of “best” U.S. teachers. (For those who do not know, that’s top drawer, informed thinking.) These teachers received their elevated recognition from various private and government organizations.

Too many performance pay plans do not offer meaningful rewards to teachers who help students learn more; develop relevant knowledge and skills; teach in a variety of high need subjects, schools, and assignments; and lead school reforms in their communities as well as across the nation (i.e., the four pillars of the TeacherSolutions performance pay framework).

Their recommendations reflect thinking and wishes among educators through most of the 20th century. Some of this thinking found earlier expression in experimental programs around the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill where Barnett’s organization resides.

In the spirit of comity, Barnett’s comments lead to several complementary observations.

1. The process of education changed in the last 6 years with the introduction of mobile PCs, almost ubiquitous wireless communications, and their expanding variety of off-springs. Now, novices can learn on-demand whatever they want 24 hours a day 7 days a week from anywhere a cell phone works.

2. Uncounted millions of learning transactions occur, probably hourly, over mobile communications. I’m guessing most of these occur without teacher guidance outside of schools. No one knows (beyond anecdotes and preliminary empirical studies) yet how these affect what happens between students and teachers in schools.

3. On-demand learners arguably constitute an emerging concurrent majority with school teachers. These learners have started expanding learning venues to fit themselves.

4. The social role of transmitting what is known from one generation to the next has expanded with limited teacher participation.

5. Profound changes appear underway for what constitutes a teacher in and out of school. Such changes complicate further the extent to which merit pay to teachers reflects teachers’ influences on student learning.

I appreciate and have benefited from incentive and performance pay in and out of schools. I look forward to others having the same options.

Yet, I would argue that school awards of such pay should be limited to academic performance, not for out of school activities. When these activities translate to increased student performance gains, teachers have done our jobs.

Or, with on-demand mobile learning available, why not pay students for their increases rather than educators? Maybe students would meet criteria and graduate earlier?

Tablet PC Education Blog