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The latest, although this has been bantered around for decades, in education is the idea of merit pay for teachers in order to improve education for our children.
This flies in the face of what has been taking place in other aspects of our society. We are seeing large corporations coming to the government trough because they are in financial ruin, yet we are also seeing where the top executives of those companies have been given hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses, or “merit” pay. What criteria was used in determining their pay?
That is the problem of merit pay in teaching. What is the criteria? Is it going to be how the students do on a “test”? If so, what incentive does a teacher have to teach a group of “slow learners”? Is the goal to develop our youth to be “free thinkers” or should they be regimented? How does one measure a teacher's ability at developing “free thinking” in a student?
How can you place criteria for teachers to achieve in order to qualify for merit pay when we are seeing how failure has made a select few extremely wealthy?
I have experienced a teacher situation where merit would have been warranted, but would not have been paid. The said teacher taught the low achieving fifth graders. She taught on an individualized basis stressing techniques on how to learn, rather than on content. She did not give assigned homework, but required a book report every week, meaning they had to read books. Grades were not “given” but were earned by the student based on learning contracts signed by the student, the teacher, and the student's parent(s) at the beginning of each grading period. The results were that the next year when standardized tests were given her students would advance to the high group, or at worst the middle group.
Although her students showed marked improvement in their standardized test scores, primarily because they developed their ability to think and take responsibility for their learning, she would not have received merit pay because her teaching style was contrary to that of the principal's.
Rather than merit pay for teachers offer them a better wage in the first place. More than enough money for this purpose could be arrived at simply by cutting the military budget 15%. They cannot account for more than that amount anyway, meaning they either did not need it or it has gone for other purposes. It might as well go toward something beneficial to mankind – educating the citizens of tomorrow!
