Shopping at Macy’s

Shopping at Macy’s is a metaphor for teacher merit pay. Sales associates at Macy’s work on commission. For every item they sell they get X percentage in addition to their base pay. Teacher merit pay (or pay for performance) would provide a teacher with X percentage in addition to their base pay for every one of their students with an acceptable test score.

Macy’s had a holiday sale on menswear. I needed dress pants. I don’t shop for clothes often, so when I do, I linger. I try on, select, try on, select, and so on until I have what I need. My process of selection can be painfully tedious for any salesperson so I usually just go it alone. It is just simpler and more enjoyable for me that way.

At Macy’s a salesperson cordially asked me if I needed help. I asked for directions but declined any additional help. Because of the way I shop I circulated the department several times; so several times passed her area of the department. Each time we would make eye contact and acknowledge each other. She would ask if I needed assistance, I would decline.

When I was ready I happened to be in this salesperson’s area so went to her register. She was helping another customer, so I waited. After ten minutes, another salesperson asked if I needed assistance. I responded that I needed to pay for the items I had selected. He offered to ring me up.

However, before he could do so, the first salesperson came back and politely but firmly said, No. She informed both the second salesperson and me that she had been “helping” me and that she was going to ring up my items. I had to wait another fifteen minutes for her to “help” me while the other salespeople floated around the floor.

The belief that merit pay will create better teachers and better learning environments is wrong. In the incident described, did I receive better service? Was a better shopping experience created for me? Or did the introduction of commissions simply create a more aggressive staff who may have been more knowledgeable about the products but ultimately focused on competing against his or her peers instead of helping me?

Teacher merit pay will certainly create more aggressive and competitive teachers. However, more aggressive and competitive teachers do not guarantee richer, more successful learning environments. In fact, merit pay teachers will have the opposite effect. Ambitious teachers seeking recognition and merit pay will close off their classrooms to guard against perceived competitors. They will divert their energies from teaching to making strategic alliances to eradicate new competition and maintain or advance their own stature with their administration.

Content will suffer. Skills will suffer. Merit pay teachers will focus on advancing test scores (the currency with which they buy credit) over advancing inquiry and creative problem solving in the core disciplines (the skills their students need for future success). The merit pay system may inevitably serve to deter potentially great teachers from entering the classroom, because they lack the social aggression necessary to succeed in the newly “reformed” profession.

More than Just a Kiss

Marita doesn’t need a brand-new school with acres of playing fields and gleaming facilities. She doesn’t need a laptop, a smaller class, a teacher with a PhD, or a bigger apartment. She doesn’t need a higher IQ or a mind as quick as Chris Langan’s. All those things would be nice, of course. But they miss the point. Marita just needed a chance. (Gladwell, Outliers. 2008)

If you were to agree with Malcolm Gladwell, success would be one part cultural legacy, one part family and support, one part perseverance, and one part chance (or opportunity).

Milton Hershey is an “outlier.” He is someone who (per Gladwell’s definition) has done something “out of the ordinary.” His parent’s only surviving child, Milton Hershey dropped out of school in the fourth grade because his family moved around a lot. With the collective resources of his mother’s family (who were not rich) an adult Milton Hershey began and ended several failed candy making businesses.

A trip to Colorado (where he learned to make caramel from milk) after another failed attempt at starting a candy making business and a trip to The Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 (where he first saw and eventually purchased chocolate-making machinery)  laid the foundation for the creation of “the largest producer of quality chocolate in North America and a global leader in chocolate and sugar confectionery.”

Building off Gladwell’s definition of “outlier,” I would like to say Milton Hershey was a  “true outlier.”  He was someone who did something “out of the ordinary” with his success. Milton Hershey used the fortune earned from his success to build a “complete community around his factory.” To discourage comparisons to the stereotypical factory town, Hershey requested architects vary the look and feel of houses as they would look like in any other town or community.

I am sure if we dug deep enough we could find evidence that would attribute his desire to build a community rather than a factory town is a result of the frequent family moves he experienced as a child and his adult understanding of the importance of strong family ties. (His mother’s family was essential in providing him with the opportunities to engage in his candy ventures.)

As a “true outlier,” someone who applies the lessons and rewards of his or her success towards the greater public good, Hershey (more specifically his wife) founded the Milton Hershey School – “the nation’s largest, cost-free, private, co-educational home and school for children from families of low income, limited resources and social need.”

To its students, the Milton Hershey School (MHS) represents that “chance” Malcolm Gladwell speaks about in Outliers.

For a century, MHS has served as a transforming environment for children in need. Boys and girls who hail from different social and ethnic backgrounds, but are connected by surroundings that threaten their ability to realize their dreams, come together as one family, under one roof, on the rolling green campus in Hershey, PA.

I was moved by Cynthia Wade’s film on MHS, Living the Legacy: The Untold Story of the Milton Hershey School. I saw it at a MWW Group event celebrating MHS’s centennial. There was a reception before the screening that included a signature dessert created by MHS culinary students and a panel of Hershey company executives and MHS alumni afterwards moderated by Phylicia Rashād and Paula Patton.

Jerrica Bechtold’s story was the most dramatic in the film. The eldest child and only daughter of a crack-addicted mother and a somewhat absent father (partially because he was serving a jail term), Jerrica had the toughest situation to contend with (beginning with the simple fact that only one of her two brothers was accepted into the school). Despite her initial desire to follow the rules and get good grades, the film documents her descent into potential expulsion. Frustrated, her counselor  asks her quite plainly to make a decision: Stay or go?

You can see the desire in her eyes for “normality” as she has defined it. And you hear about her reaction to the disappointing reality of her home life from her house parents at the school, teachers, and counselor. However, as one reviewer put it, the film seems a little “superficial.”

Somewhere someone made the decision to include the story of two boys at the school (though that story was not as developed as Jerrica’s). Instead of adding to the film, the story of the two boys is distracting. Thinking about the film, I wonder if it wouldn’t have been more effective to focus on the story of Jerrica and her family, peppering it with the “cameo-like” reflections from other students on similar circumstances?

The film had a fair amount of these reflections and they worked to bring the points being made home. However, a stronger, more focused storyline was needed to fully carry the film into greater depths. As it is now, neither the two boys or Jerrica gets enough screen time to make the movie poignant.

But regardless, the film did succeed in changing my shopping behavior. Hershey will certainly be my first choice in chocolate and candy products from now on. Until I saw the film, I never thought of Milton Hershey as a dedicated philanthropist and humanitarian.