I did not catch Bill Ferriter’s commentary about my teacher pay article when he posted it in late February. Sorry, man. Mr. Ferriter is a middle school language arts teacher in Wake County, was teacher of the year in 2005-2006, and calls himself “The Tempered Radical.”

Mr. Ferriter found that I “seemed committed to spin and to pushing politics.” He came to this conclusion via the pick-and-choose method of criticism. Rather than engaging substantive issues, such as the myth of the “national average” or the recruitment and retention issue, Mr. Ferriter took issue with two minor points.

In the Spotlight, I said,

In addition, states in the region that compete with North Carolina for teachers rank significantly lower in adjusted average compensation. South Carolina is tied for 21st with Alabama, Maryland ranks 30th, Virginia ranks 33rd, and Florida ranks 36th in the final ranking.

Mr. Ferriter points out the $600 advantage that North Carolina has over South Carolina is not “significantly lower.” Fair enough, but I clearly refer to a group of states in this sentence. Within the region, the differences are significant. My next sentence reads,

The adjusted average compensation for North Carolina teachers is nearly $600 more than South Carolina and Alabama, almost $3,500 more than Maryland, over $5,200 more than Virginia, and over $6,600 more than Florida.

Mr. Ferriter’s next point dealt with merit pay. He said, “Even more interesting is the complete lack of information in this piece on how merit pay will benefit teachers.” It is not hard to understand why Mr. Ferriter believes that a discussion of merit pay is an “unrelated” conclusion to the report. Judging from his comment above, he wants to know how merit pay would benefit teachers. I want to know how merit pay would benefit students.

Indeed, in the first sentence of the conclusion, I clearly say that the goal is to find a way to use teacher pay to “help students learn.” If you follow the endnote to a research study that Mr. Ferriter calls “unconvincing,” I elaborate on it. By the way, he does not say why the Duke University study (of a merit pay pilot program in North Carolina) is unconvincing. It is more accurate to say that the study was inconvenient for Mr. Ferriter, so he disregards it.

In a more recent commentary, Mr. Ferriter claims that my discussion of teacher pay questions the status of teaching as a profession. Rather, I assume that teaching is a profession, and as such, can find ways, like using merit pay, to create a “deep enough candidate pool to make fine-grade choices about who “makes the cut” in our classrooms.”