New Mexico examines merit pay for teachers

New Mexico isn’t a haven for good public education. Recently, an Education Week study gave the state one of the lowest grades for its public school students’ chance for success.

But, New Mexico legislators know it, and they are not sitting on their heels.

Now, the New Mexico Independent outlines what that state’s legislators are saying about merit pay for teachers.

A big stimulus for this is a recent New Mexico legislature Legislative Finance Committee (LFC) report on teacher pay.

Teachers in that state are paid on a three-tier licensure level system similar to what we have in Kentucky.

The LFC used New Mexico’s rich longitudinal assessment information (which produces high quality individual student data that our now defunct CATS system never provided). The LFC report found that, “There are effective and ineffective teachers at each licensure level despite the pay being similar at each licensure level. The differences in teacher effectiveness between licensure levels were not substantial, but the differences in teacher effectiveness within each licensure level were immense. There is wide variation in terms of teacher effectiveness within a licensure level.”

Simply put, just paying teachers more based on longevity or having an advanced degree does not produce better student learning. The normal private sector motivation of better pay for higher caliber work doesn’t apply to tier-based teacher pay systems.

So, New Mexico is looking at doing something different – paying teachers based on their actual performance with students. And, while some questions remain, because New Mexico had the high quality student assessment data necessary to do the research, they are on a solid track to do something better for their kids.

Meanwhile, here in Kentucky, we never got such useful data from CATS, and we stay mired in the same sort of tiered pay system that New Mexico’s research shows does not work well for kids. While New Mexicans move forward with good data to guide them, thanks to our closed-minded education bureaucracy, we currently have none.