Merit based Pay for Teachers

Picture a surgeon receiving pay based upon the speediness of his patient’s recovery, or possibly, a personal trainer receiving a raise if her client can compete in a decathlon. These possibilities may sound silly but, for many careers in today’s world these suggestions are not far fetched. In fact, any lawyer worth their weight in salt wants to be made partner of their firm after winning a number of cases. Business people alike will quickly call for a renegotiation of their salary when they have peaked in performance. It follows that school teachers should do the same. This argument is overtaking the typical water-cooler conversation for educators within many school systems across the nation. Public school administrators in the District of Columbia, Denver, and across the nation plan to reward effective teachers by raising salaries and thereby improving student performance. According to D.C. Chancellor of Schools Michelle Rhee, this is a shot at an incredible pay increase. In fact, Rhee, in her sophomore year as Chancellor, regards this program to be a “no lose situation”.

There is no set formula for the new pay program; it has taken many forms in various states around the nation. In Florida it is geared toward mathematics and science teachers primarily. Students facing the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, FCAT, play a significant role in their teachers’ salary because math and science are stressed on the test. Fundamentally, these performance-based pay plans include a broad array of different kinds of efforts, ranging from merit-pay plans for individual teachers to school-based performance award plans that may reward teachers for the overall performance of their schools. Those for this initiative conclude that the bottom line is that it is being implemented in an effort to improve the quality of elementary and secondary school teaching.

There is a catch. Many outlines of this strategy require teachers giving up tenure for one year. Academic tenure is primarily intended to guarantee the right to academic freedom: it protects teachers and researchers when they dissent from prevailing opinion, openly disagree with authorities of any sort, or spend time on unfashionable topics. Absent tenure, professors could be pressured by administrators to issue higher grades for the attracting and keeping a greater number of students. This change would mean that teachers would be required to subject to one year of probation before they could regain tenure. For most educators giving up tenure is a deal breaker.

Many believe power will be given back to the teachers; they further state that teachers should be entitled to negotiate their base rate salary and gain rewards based on student performance and teacher leadership. Many teachers' unions are finally embracing performance pay, despite opposition as the best hope for boosting income.

The ultimate question is whether this reform actually reform education. Many of the school systems we know today have curriculum built for the 1950s. This leaves many American students behind on the global front. This reform aims to increase accountability and would require more frequent evaluations of student performance on tests, and in class assignments.

Teachers may begin to feel pressure to give student easier assignments to boost the underlying score on evaluation sheets versus comprehensively preparing their class for the real world.