Who would have thought that Trump would revitalize Unions…
Lest anyone get too excited about Colorado Senator Michael Bennet after his emotional speech on the Senate floor last month, please know that he was the superintendent of Denver Public Schools when the Pro Comp compensation system was brought into DPS. This Pro Comp compensation system is one of the central teacher union concerns that sparked their strike.
From Six Dangerous Myths About Pay (Pfeffer, 1998):
Despite the evident popularity of this practice, the problems with individual merit pay are numerous and well documented. It has been shown to undermine teamwork, encourage employees to focus on the short term, and lead people to link compensation to political skills and ingratiating personalities rather than to performance.
and
Surveys conducted by various consulting companies that specialize in management and compensation also reveal the problems and dissatisfaction with individual merit pay. For instance, a study by the consulting firm William M. Mercer reported 73% that major changes to their performance-management plans in the preceding two years, as they experimented with different ways to tie pay to individual performance. But 47% reported that their employees found the systems neither fair nor sensible, and 51% of the employees said that the performance management system provided little value to the company. No wonder Mercer concluded that most individual merit or performance-based pay plans share two attributes: they absorb vast amounts of management time and resources, and they make everybody unhappy.
It’s a bad idea in business. So why apply it to education?
It’s too obviously gamed.