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His Holiness, the Dalai Lama writes in the book In My Own Words: An Introduction to My Teachings and Philosophy:

“As children grow older and enter school, their need for support must be met by their teachers. If a teacher not only imparts academic education, but also assumes responsibility for preparing students for life, his or her pupils will feel trust and respect, and what has been taught will leave an indelible impression on their minds. On the other hand, that which is taught by a teacher who does not show true concern for his or her students’ overall well-being will not be retained for long.”

Educators teach students not subjects and not grade levels. That statement has obviously been repeated so much that it is now a bit of a cliché, yet it is still profoundly true. Even the words of the Dalai Lama seem to advocate for teachers of students in the words above. As His Holiness points out, there is no teaching, hence no learning without compassion. It is literally impossible to teach students and not care deeply about their welfare and support. As instructional leaders, here's three lessons for teaching from the Dalai Lama.

• Teachers have a responsibility to support the children they teach. There is no escaping this responsibility. Those who want to teach the young must care for them. To support our students means we care about more than just their ability to get high test scores. It means providing them the emotional support they are sometimes not getting at home. It means being there for them emotionally, when no one else can. Unfortunately, that is not something objectively measured through value-added statistics and multiple choice tests. How can compassion be reduced to some rating scale?
• Teachers have a responsibility to not only teach the academics, but also prepare students for life. If we really want our teaching to have a long-term impact on the lives of our students, we must assume the responsibility of providing them with the preparation they need for life. By default, a willingness to prepare those we teach for life signifies compassion for who our students are and where they’re going. Preparation for life should be more than test scores. It should be more than success measured by money and financial status. It should be more than success measured by educational attainment. Preparing students for life means we equip them to become compassionate citizens of the 21st century.
• Teachers who teach without compassion are ineffective. Forget value-added measures and teacher evaluation systems. Without compassion, none of those things matter. If you want to see an effective teacher, look at the level of concern they have for their students. If you want to see an ineffective teacher, look for a teacher who sees students as test scores and an opportunity to earn a bonus. That’s the whole problem with merit pay. It appeals to greed and “what’s in it for me” not necessarily what’s good for the children. Compassion should be the teacher's primary motivation, not greed.

The greatest lesson from the Dalai Lama's teaching is that those who would be the greatest and most successful teachers are those who have compassion in their hearts not themselves.

The Education Commission of the States (ECS), an organization whose stated mission is "to help states develop effective policy and practice for public education by providing data, research, analysis, and leadership" has released  a report entitled "More on Pay-for-Performance." In that report it describes Pay-for-Performance models, and it reviews the current research regarding pay-for-performance policies in schools. The studies they review are the following:

Nashville Tennessee's Project on Incentives in Teaching (POINT): In this study, it was found that bonus pay alone does not result in higher student performance.

Study of Six Teacher Incentive Fund Sites (Louisiana, Arizona, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas): This study boasted a laundry list of positives: 1) Greater academic growth, 2) Increases in teacher retention rates, 3) Increases in schools meeting AYP goals, 4) Increases in high school graduation rates, 5) Significant increases in math and reading proficiency, 6) Increases in teacher collaboration. According to the ECS report though, this wasn't a "study" at all because an experimental design was not used in the research so no one can really say these positives were attributable to the pay incentives.

What's more of interest in the ECS report are its suggesting policy implications.

• "The theory of action for pay-for-performance may be flawed." The report draws the same conclusion that many of us educators in the field have been screaming loudly: "Incentives alone may not be sufficient to prompt improvement in teacher and student performance and to attract high-quality teachers to hard-to-staff schools and subject areas." There's no doubt that teachers want more pay. Who doesn't? But teaching and learning is such a complex process, achievement can't be reduced to a single test score. Paying incentives for test scores is morally wrong, and most teachers know that scores are the result of much more than the teaching and instruction they provide. As far as incentives for teachers to teach in hard-to-staff schools? What about dealing the with conditions at those schools that make them hard-to-staff? There's a reason teachers don't want to teach in those schools, and it certainly isn't necessarily just pay. The whole idea that you can use pay-for-performance schemes in education is flawed and will only turn our schools into places where test scores matter more than kids.
• "Performance pay incentives may have a low motivation value as compared to accountability systems." In other words, the authors of the ECS study review suggest that NCLB may have "diminished the power of pay incentives." NCLB's penalties and sanctions could have possibly affected the effects of incentive pay, but what is objectionable to many educators is having a entire system of incentive and punishments based on test scores. That kind of system elevates "the test" to the center of everything that happens in the classroom. Most teachers find no joy in teaching test preparation. Both performance pay and performance punishments suck the joy from teaching and learning.
• "Pay-for-performance reforms may take several years to realize their desired outcomes." This ECS statement frightens me. We know what pay-for-performance systems based on test scores do in the short term. The "test" is elevated to the center of the curriculum. Schools and classrooms turn into test-prep factories churning out students who have either acceptable or unacceptable scores. The whole idea of implementing that model long-term may destroy public education in the US. The truth is we don't know that the long-term implementation of performance pay will improve education either.
• "Securing sustainable funding for pay-for-performance remains a challenge in the current economic climate." With this statement, the ECS is right on target. Even if states were to implement pay-for-performance schemes, they have difficulties funding the current pay schedules much less new pay schedules. What if they changed to a pay-for-performance scheme, and in the third year of that scheme, two-thirds of the teachers in a state meet the pay-for-performance standards specified by the pay scale? But the state only budgeted enough money for a third meeting those standards. State funding streams do not increase based on the performance of schools and teachers. It is relatively fixed.  The state in this case has two options: a) find more revenue, b) freeze the incentives pay due to lack of revenue. States rarely are willing to increase revenues because that usually means more taxes. They usually resort to the second option. They freeze pay. I can only imagine the effect of telling two-thirds of teachers in the state who were expecting a bonus, now suddenly finding out the money's not coming. But wait a minute! That's happened in North Carolina for the last four years. The state did away with testing bonuses when the economy went awry. Teachers were to get $1,500 or $750 bonuses based on test scores. Instead, they got nothing. Ultimately, what ECS is suggesting here is that pay-for-performance schemes for states may not be sustainable in both short term and long term.

In response to those politicians in Florida and elsewhere who have pushed their merit pay bills through in the face of research that says it won’t work, and also in the face of many experienced educators who tell them the same, I post Daniel Pink’s TED video “The Surprising Science of Motivation.” I suspect it is just as Pink says:

“What worries me as we stand here in the rubble of the economic collapse is that too many organizations are making their decisions, their policies about talent and people based on assumptions that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted in folklore more than science.”

The idea of merit pay and pay for performance will not work. It will not improve education, and in the end, we can only hope it does not cause major damage to public education. Perhaps though, that is the ultimate goal any way. With the public education system in shambles due to bad education policy, there is no option but privatize. Then again, maybe this whole push for merit pay is indicative of who and what we truly idolize in this country:  we think the answer to all our problems lie in free markets and business. We forget that our current economic mess was caused by that which we idolize.