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Education isn't a business, and teachers don't need merit-based incentives to do their best work.
In the ongoing question of how to educate the masses in the modern age, some ideas are worthy of serious consideration and some are not. Merit-based pay for teachers falls in the "not" category.
Entrepreneur and previous presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy has been making the rounds on news programs advocating for merit-based pay for teachers. Ramaswamy claims that "pay for performance" is what businesses in the private sector do, and says, "There's no reason we shouldn't be running our public schools in the same way."
Oh yes, there are many reasons why we shouldn't be running our public schools this way.
Businesses are businesses. Governments are governments. Schools are schools. The idea of of running any of those things like any of the others is just silly, no matter which way you try to do it. Imagine saying a business should be run like a school or a government. Makes no sense, right? Having been both a teacher and a business owner, I can tell you that educating children and running a business are night and day endeavors, and what applies to one has nothing to do with the other.
The goal of a business is to make money by providing consumers a product or a service. The more money you make, the more successful your business is. That's a pretty simple equation with simple definitions. The goal of a school is to make sure that children and teens gain the knowledge and skills they need to enter the adult world and be a functioning, contributing member of a society.
But what does that entail? And what does "educate" even mean? Who decides what skills and knowledge are necessary for the masses to have, and how do we go about making sure each child and teen learns those things? These are questions education specialists have been asking for centuries, and the answers aren't cut and dry. Education itself is complicated, and measuring education is even more so.
Let's say we were going to go ahead with merit pay for teachers. How do we measure it? How do we determine what makes someone a high-performing teacher vs. a low-performing teacher?
In a business, we have Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)—measurable things we keep track of to see how we're doing. A KPI might be a quota or a percentage of growth or something else numerical that can be put into a spreadsheet and charted to see performance or progress.
What kind of KPIs would teachers have? Number of lesson plans? That's going to vary by teacher and subject. Number of hours spent teaching? That's already predetermined. Quality of teaching? Based on whose methodology or subjective perspective?
We'd have to use measurements such as student test scores, grades, or other assessments to which we try to assign numbers, which are already controversial in and of themselves. Tying teacher "merit" to those student scores is inherently problematic for several reasons.
Tying teacher pay to student outcomes assumes a good teacher = good student test scores/grades and bad teacher = poor student test scores/grades. But people who actually have experience teaching hundreds or thousands of kids will tell you that's not how the math works out. There are incredible teachers who bend over backward for their students and pour their entire heart into teaching whose students struggle to perform well on tests or get good grades. And there are teachers who don't have to make a big effort because they work in wealthy districts where parent involvement and resources means students will almost assuredly score well on tests regardless of the quality of teaching.
Schools and school districts vary by degrees that would probably shock most Americans if they saw the discrepancies. It is patently unfair to reward teachers who live and work in districts where students have every advantage, from the latest technology to private tutors, and punish those who work in districts where families struggle just to put food on the table and students have to navigate the perils of poverty while trying to learn.
Education is as much an art as a science.Photo credit: Canva
How to best measure student outcomes is already a big question mark in education. Tying them to teacher pay as a measurement of "merit" just adds another unnecessary layer of complexity to it.
If you're a teacher and your pay is tied directly to student outcomes, where are you going to want to teach? In a school district in a wealthy district where parents have the means to pay for tutors, high property taxes ensure schools are well-funded, and kids have plenty to eat? Or a school district where kids come to school hungry, parents may not be as engaged, and schools struggle to get the resources they need? Which student outcomes are going to mean a better paycheck for you as a teacher?
Merit-based pay means well-off school districts with higher student scores will get more teacher applicants, and can therefore be more selective, and will therefore perpetuate high student outcomes even more.
Some student learning is easily measurable with a standardized test and some is not. Math? That's easy to measure. Rote memorization of facts? Sure, test it. But how well a student understands historical implications or grasps lessons learned through literature studies or are able to appreciate a work of art or can apply what they've learned to real-world situations? Those things are a lot harder to standardize or measure. Teaching is an art and a science, and teachers know that learning growth is neither a linear process nor a purely numerical one. There's so much progress that teachers can see that a test can't measure what gets lost when test score "outcomes" are overemphasized.
And what about grades? For many subjects, grades are subjective, so if teacher pay is tied to grade improvements, that's just asking for grades to be even more subjective. Even if merit-based pay for teachers resulted in improved test scores or grade measurements on paper, that doesn't mean the quality of teaching or education has actually gone up. It just means the focus has shifted to measurable learning, often to the detriment of equally important learning that's harder to measure.
Ramaswamy has said that merit measurement would also include things like parent feedback and peer assessments. But those kinds of assessments are wildly subjective and rife with gaming potential.
There will always be teachers who are willing to work in lower income districts because they love kids and they love teaching and they're doing it for the good of humankind. In fact, I'd say most teachers fall into the category of doing it for the love of the work, which is also why merit-based pay is ridiculous. The merit-based pay idea is based on an assumption that most teachers aren't already doing their best. Teachers want to be paid what their work is worth, not compete for who gets better pay based on measurements they only have so much control over. The idea that throngs of teachers are just phoning it in, and that they'd only work harder or perform better if there were some kind of merit-based incentive to do so, is insulting.
I'm not claiming to have all the answers to improving education in the United States, but the idea that educator performance is the primary problem is a claim made by people who have never set foot in a classroom as a teacher. There are lots of solutions that can and should be tried, but merit-based pay for teachers isn't one of them.
Robert DeNiro and Noel Gallagher from Oasis
Oasis's Noel Gallagher might have a bone to pick. No, not with his brother Liam, though probably that too. This time, it could possibly be with legendary actor Robert De Niro.
Let's back it up. About nine years ago, Noel posted an Instagram photo where he's sitting at a table with Robert seemingly deep in conversation with the caption: “So we’ve been down to the South of France for a few days, and at a 17-hour lunch at our friend's house THIS... THIS... Actually happened!!!”
The "friend"—it turns out—was Bono, of course, the front man for the band U2. As reported by Alex Flood for an article on NME, Noel not only posted the photo but kept telling the story to anyone who would listen. One such person was Alex Goldstein on the UK radio show TalkSport, who had Noel on as a guest.
robert deniro GIFGiphy
He says to Noel, "Robert De Niro, you've tweeted a picture." Noel quickly points out he didn't "tweet" it, he "grammed" it. Once that's all settled, Goldstein asks how the "17-hour lunch" came about.
Noel humble-brags that his friend "casually mentioned" that De Niro was joining him and his then-wife Sara. Genuinely excited, Noel then confesses, "The only thing that could top that is probably going on a bender with Jack Nicholson." Noel then claims that the dinner started at 1:00 p.m. and went until 6:00 a.m. the following morning. "I don't remember dinner being served."
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
When asked if De Niro knew who he was, Noel admits, "I gotta say, he didn't have a clue, no." And even better, he—according to Noel—said, "Write down the name of that band again that you were in."
Cut to this week. De Niro is making the press-junket rounds for his new film The Alto Kings, directed by Barry Levinson. NME Magazine writer and interviewer, Alex Flood, sat down with him and candidly says, "Robert, I know that you've met Noel Gallagher because he posted this picture of you at a dinner on his Instagram in the South of France once." Seemingly taken aback, both Robert and his co-star Debra Messing look a tad worried. The picture is then handed to Robert, who studies it like a script.
"He's gone on the radio to talk about it, and I just wanted to know if you remembered that and any memories of what happened."
The 81-year-old actor does not remember. "But," he says, "I know where it is. And I heard about it through a mutual friend who knows him. He said they were getting back together and it's a big, big deal."
Flood goes on to relay what Noel had said about the whole day/night. "He said he bent your ear for about two hours. He said you didn't know who Oasis were, but when you were leaving, you asked him—'what was the name of that band?' And I just wondered, did you go away and listen to them?"
British 90S GIF by OasisGiphy
De Niro and Messing explode in laughter. "No!" He then adds, "But I did have a mutual friend who told me we almost had dinner with him, supposedly, last night. It didn't happen, but anyway..."
Hopefully, that means Noel still stans De Niro, despite possibly not having reciprocity. However, his feelings about his brother Liam? We might have to wait until after their upcoming reunion tour to find out.
No pet owner wants to give their vet "the ick."
Ally McBeal first brought us the phrase “gives me the ick” back in 1999, and it’s had a resurgence in recent years, thanks to TikTok. While mostly reserved for describing annoyances in the dating world, the term can and has been used to describe virtually every red flag or pet peeve under the sun. Now, thanks to Dr. Frank Bozelka, we can enjoy a veterinarian version of “the icks.”
Just to be clear, the icks in question don’t come from the patients themselves…but the pet parents. While Dr. Bozelka is clearly just poking fun, he doesn’t shy away from highlighting some of the choices that pet parents make that cause some serious problems for their furry friends.
As Bozelka points out in his video caption, breeders “are not medical experts.” He added that while there are certainly knowledgeable breeders out there—even some who taught him breed specific tidbits—”most of the time you’re dealing with a backyard breeder who is literally just trying to dodge any responsibility.”
@dr.bozelkaervet While there certainly are breeders that know their stuff, they are still not medical experts! Sure I’ve learned a few things from breeders about unique breeds I didn’t know, but it’s not very common. And the harsh reality of being a vet is that most of the time, you’re dealing with a backyard breeder that’s literally just trying to dodge any responsibility. So yes, our gut reaction when people say that is to cringe, sorry. I cannot stress this enough: DO NOT JUST BUY A BREED BECAUSE IT’S CUTE!!! DO! YOUR!! HOMEWORK!!! Make sure the breed is a good fit for your lifestyle, and make sure your lifestyle is a good fit for the breed! And for retractable leashes: I’ve seen far more injuries caused to dogs and humans from retractable leashes compared to other leashes. End of explanation. For number 6: stop complaining about the wait times. We know it’s frustrating. The dirty truth, however, is the vast majority of the time it’s NOT the fault of the hospital staff. It’s other owners and the cases we are seeing. #fyp #comedyvideo #satire #doglover #catlover #petlover #vetsoftiktok #drbozelka
Hence why his gut reaction when he hears someone refer to a breeder’s opinion as gospel is to “cringe.”
Even breeders agreed on this one. One wrote, “As a breeder I never give medical advice. I say: ‘please go see your vet.’ Maybe because I’m also a vet tech.”
Next on the list: when someone asks, “If this were your dog what would you do?" then proceeds to do the opposite of what he’d do.
“Bro, why did you even ask me?” he says in the clip. Seriously, why ask if you're not even going to take the information to heart?
University Of Washington Dog GIF by Pac-12 NetworkGiphy
Some people desperately want, say, a husky dog because they're so beautiful and so smart. But breeds like that also have very high activity needs that require some pretty significant lifestyle changes. And yet, people complain when that same breed of dog is tearing up the house all the time because they're not giving them the physical activity outlets they require.
In other words, you can put a dog bred to race sleds through the snow into a 12' by 12' living room and expect them to just happily chill there.
Along the lines of the husky example, pet owners really need to understand the breed of animal they are getting.
“I cannot stress this enough: DO NOT JUST BUY A BREED BECAUSE IT’S CUTE! DO! YOUR! HOMEWORK!” Bozelka wrote in all caps.
Dog breeds in particular vary a lot and some have very specific needs that an owner may not be prepared to handle. Know what you're getting into before making a decade-plus long commitment to care for an animal.
@dr.bozelkaervet True story… Legends has it that Hisoka aged another 2 years by the time she realized what was happening with him… Make sure to follow me on other platforms for when TikTok inevitably gets banned! YouTube: @Dr.BozelkaERvet1 Facebook and Instagram: @Dr.BozelkaERvet #fyp #comedyvideo #catlover #doglover #petlover #animallover #vetsoftiktok #drbozelka
No one wants to be made to wait when their animal needs to be seen, but there's only so much that is under the staff's control.
“We know it’s frustrating,” Bozelka writes, “The dirty truth, however, is the vast majority of the time it’s NOT the fault of the hospital staff. It’s the other owner and the cases we are seeing."
Lastly, Dr. Bozelka listed retractable leashes as an ick, simply because they’re so dangerous. He’s seen “far more injuries caused” by them in comparison to other leashes, so better to be safe than sorry.
While not every vet might have the same icks as Bozelka, it’s easy to see how any one in his situation would be aggravated. Vets undergo years of education and training to help give our pets the best life possible. And when we make their job even harder, frustration is inevitable.
Dr. Bozelka has also shared things pet owners do that vets love:
@dr.bozelkaervet Replying to @konagirl02 May not be mah best work, but it’s still important work! There are plenty of things pet owners can do to make us happy, and most of them are pretty simple! And TRUST me, for those of you that are understanding and considerate of the wait times, the vet staffs are literally singing your praises and blessing your family and friends behind close doors because of how amazing you are! Being polite and understanding about your wait is a sure fire way to get a staff to love you (at least from an ER standpoint). #fyp #comedyvideo #catlover #doglover #petlover #animallover #vetsoftiktok #drbozelka
According to the website KeepingItPawsome.com, there are a few other behaviors that vets find frustrating, including:
Overfeeding, trusting “Dr. Google” over their professional opinion, being verbally abusive or getting hysterical in the waiting room, not having pet insurance or an emergency fund, waiting too long before brining the pet in to get a check up, expecting free treatment or reduced fees, giving up on sick or old pets, trying medications or supplements without consulting them (again, Google can’t always be trusted), and last but not least—expecting a quick and easy fix.
Vets want what’s best for our fur babies. So these are good things to remember as pet parents, so that we may better help them help us.
This article originally appeared last year.