No wonder people are confused about ProComp
Monday, August 11, 2008Written by: Alan Gottlieb
OK, let’s see if we’ve got this straight. ProComp is "merit pay," according to a front-page headline in today’s Denver Post. Or it’s "performance pay" as named in the body of the story. Or perhaps it’s "pay for performance," as the title of a book by two of its chief architects and an academic expert attests.
Oh, no, wait a minute! Campaign "literature" from 2005 has the real story:
“Denver’s new teacher compensation system should not be confused with “merit pay” and “performance pay” …these earlier attempts were unpopular due to the perceived subjectivity of the process and the often narrow focus used to evaluate an employee.
“The ProComp system actually is results-based pay, using multiple criteria to assess teachers’ performance.”
Ah-ha. Now I get it.
So please tell me, when some of us watching from the sidelines criticize all parties for misleading the public, deliberately or not, why is it that we get lambasted for being unfair? What on earth are people supposed to think? Especially when a system that dedicates well over 90 percent of its money to "salary building" can’t possibly be called anything like "merit pay" or "pay for performance?"
Meanwhile, memo to the Denver Post: take a hint from your jointly-owned competitor. They’ve figured out how to describe ProComp more or less accurately, in headlines and in the body of the story.
August 11th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Alan makes a good point that ProComp and some other teacher pay plans are often called different, sometimes confusing, names, by reporters and others. However, that is not uncommon in edu-speak. Is the Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) a program? Don’t we think of it as a test? And doesn’t it really assess schools and districts more than students, in the end? And, does anyone believe NCLB really will leave no child left behind?
Names are names. ProComp is the Professional Compensation Plan. It doesn’t claim, on its face, to be completely about merit pay or pay for performance. Others have labelled it that way. In some ways, “market based compensation” works better, especially since some of the compensation elements are based upon market factors, not performance, but that isn’t completely right either for a mixed compensation program. No simple name perfectly describes ProComp or other plans around the nation.
And, again, which of us wants to be paid each year based upon some bonuses that we may or may not earn, rather than a relatively predictable base salary, with which to pay our mortgages, car payments, etc, with the possibility of earning some bonuses to pay for vacations, savings, etc.? Just because something goes into an employees base doesn’t mean it isn’t merit-based. I get a merit-based increase in my base pay most years, when I do a great job, and I bet many other readers do too.
August 12th, 2008 at 11:58 am
You make it sound like a bonus is an entirely capricious, random act - perhaps the relationship between bonus and performance might be related? If so, I think the answer to “which of us wants to be paid each year based upon some bonuses that we may or may not earn” would be “people who are confident that they can do a good job and earn the bonuses.”
And yes, you probably do get a salary increase that is partly merit-based (also partly COLA). Do you have also have tenure so that this merit increase continues until you retire? Is your job security and compensation immune from the overall performance of your organization? Does a colleague who sits next to you who does a really crappy job (while you do a great job) receive the same raise? Is pay in your organization determined primarily by tenure?
I know of no other industry - profit or non-profit — that has a compensation program like education. Presumably that is not because all other industries are stupid. It would also not seem to be because it is working so well in education: teachers don’t like it because they feel underpaid, administrators don’t like it given the limited flexibility, and many private citizens don’t like it given the lack of accountability and results.
Is there change you would advocate besides simply paying teachers higher salaries?
August 12th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I agree with you on the head. Merit pay ProComp is not. Calling it a ‘pay plan’ is accurate but it doesn’t really explain what ProComp is. The thing is, people know what a pay-for-performance plan is. Maybe that’s not what ProComp is entirely, but it does have some of those components. That is the way ProComp has been described in books, reports and education blogs. Even you, Alan, a year ago were describing ProComp that way:
June 18, 2007:
“The second story appeared in the June 18 Denver Post. It detailed the success of DPS’ ProComp pay-for-performance system in attracting applicants to tough schools and tough assignments within those schools.”
- Aug. 27, 2007
“How must this whining sound to Denver voters, who passed a $25 million per-year property tax increase less than two years ago to fund the ground-breaking ProComp pay-for-performance plan?”
August 13th, 2008 at 10:20 am
Ouch. Leave it to a reporter to dig up those quotes. Thanks for pointing out my errors, Jeremy. No excuses. But I have learned a lot about ProComp in the past few months, so I won’t be making that mislabeling mistake again.