Eduwonkette: How Does Performance Pay Work in Other Sectors?

While we're busy getting the annual alternative education evaluation report finished, why don't you head over to Eduwonkette and read this piece on why most college-educated professionals aren't paid for improving their stats? A few snippets:

• But do other sectors reward workers based on the quantifiable outcomes of their clients? Richard Rothstein wrote on this issue seven years ago, and here's what he concluded: It is hard to find private sector examples for [merit pay] proposals….When quality of work is important, corporations do not generally evaluate college-educated employees by quantifiable goals.

• Bain managers devote about 100 hours a year to evaluating five employees. ''When I try to imagine a school principal doing 30 reviews, I have trouble,'' [a Bain director] said.

• In health care, performance pay is allocated based on clinical hours worked, procedures performed, and the revenues brought in, not the outcomes of the patients. Physicians I talked to in preparing this post laughed at me when I asked if their performance bonuses were based on patient outcomes.

• ...in attending exclusively to annual test scores, a short-term and narrow outcome measure that is easy to manipulate, we are trotting down a dangerous path paved with unintended consequences. This is a bad idea in the private sector - i.e. Enron - and it's a bad idea for education, too.