Cincinnati Switches to Merit Pay

Last fall, the Cincinnati, OH, school district became what is believed to be the first in the country to adopt a system of merit pay—paying teachers based on their performance instead of the number of years they've worked. The first wave of teachers is already being evaluated under the program. But librarians, considered "support personnel," won't be phased in to the system until next fall. First, they have to develop an evaluation tool similar to the lengthy list of standards and scoring criteria used to rate teachers.

That's been a tricky undertaking, says Darlene Basone, chair of the librarians' curriculum council, which acts in lieu of a district media coordinator. The problem, she says, is that instead of custom tailoring an assessment to fit librarians, she and her task force were told to squeeze their job descriptions into the model already designed for teachers. "The worst problem was trying to narrow everything we did into these four 'domains,'" says Basone, referring to the broad categories that the district determined all job activities should fall under.

But perhaps the strangest thing about the draft assessment Basone and her colleagues devised is that it's pretty clear many librarians won't score well on it. For instance, under the heading "resources," there's a standard that says, "The librarian offers a balanced collection that supports the curriculum and students' needs." The problem is that many of Cincinnati's school libraries operate on a shoestring, thanks to a school-based budgeting system that gives principals near-total discretion over school spending (20 of the district's 75 schools have eliminated librarians altogether).

Carolyn Kindle, who helped draft the standards, gets $500 a year to operate her high school library. "I have not ordered books for three years," she says. And Kindle freely admits that though she does the best she can, it would be hard for her to get high scores on the very assessment she helped design. Still, Kindle thinks the standards are valuable if only because they'll let "a principal see what a good school library should have."

Asked how librarians could show they provide an adequate, up-to-date collection if they lack money to buy books, Assistant Superintendent Kathleen Ware says, "I can't comment on the standards for librarians because I haven't looked at them yet."

Carol Kroll, who helped write the new American Association of School Librarians assessment tool for school libraries, says any valid assessment must also look at a district's policies and how they support libraries. "If the district is not offering support, why have expectations that librarians can achieve these levels," says Kroll of the Cincinnati plan. "And why should the librarian be blamed if they can't?"