I just learned about merit pay programs and I want to learn more. How do they work and what are they about?
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Parent Answers to "Do you know of successful merit pay programs?"
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If we want to truly affect the graduation rates in this country and reward teachers appropriately, we must begin exploring ways to tie merit pay to graduation rates. A student achieving for one year is great and recognition for a teacher should be delivered; however, that is not our goal. Getting them to the finish line is and rewarding teachers financially when this occurs should be the ultimate carrot dangled in front of an educator.
Just think of all the possible nonacademic residual effects that would come from a merit pay system built upon this concept. What do you think the chances are that a 3rd grade teacher would continue to give support to a student in various ways over the next 9 years if they knew there was a financial reward for that child graduating? Multiply that exponentially by the number of teachers a child would have over the course of their k-12 experience and now we have built a framework, an army of teachers who would be directly tied to a student's success.
It's worth a try. I'd challenge anyone to show me not only a merit pay system but an accountability system that has delivered the results we need. If there was one out there, then I'm quite sure our kids wouldn't be dropping out of school as these catostrophic rates.
I am the founder and president of The National Coalition for Exemplary Schools
Just think of all the possible nonacademic residual effects that would come from a merit pay system built upon this concept. What do you think the chances are that a 3rd grade teacher would continue to give support to a student in various ways over the next 9 years if they knew there was a financial reward for that child graduating? Multiply that exponentially by the number of teachers a child would have over the course of their k-12 experience and now we have built a framework, an army of teachers who would be directly tied to a student's success.
It's worth a try. I'd challenge anyone to show me not only a merit pay system but an accountability system that has delivered the results we need. If there was one out there, then I'm quite sure our kids wouldn't be dropping out of school as these catostrophic rates.
I am the founder and president of The National Coalition for Exemplary Schools
There are many factors that a teacher has to take into consideration upon teaching a class. I use to believe in merit pay, until I enrolled in a credential program to become a teacher myself. A teacher has many obstacles to overcome in a short amount of time. Firstly, there are many multiple intelligences which a child learns best through. A teacher has to discover which intelligences each student uses, secondly there are 1.6 million English Language learners in California Public Schools. A teacher must teach a wide range of EL student which do not learn at the same rate. Some EL students are lacking academic English skills, some students just entered the country have little or no English and other students who have had little or no formal education at all. This doesn’t even include the State Content Standards and State Testing. So with all these daunting tasks that teachers have to overcome daily how can any teacher be properly evaluated whether they are a good teacher and deserve a bonus in pay or whether they are a bad teacher and shouldn’t be teaching at all?
If you mean programs that offer merit pay for teachers, it's basically like this: the better the teacher "performs" at his/her job, they become eligible for bonuses or higher salaries. In theory, it is intended to work as an incentive for teachers to do better in the classroom.
I say "in theory" because there are several problems with the plan. Some have to do with how you "measure" performance, with several arguments such as "gee, how can you provide a fair baseline" when not all classes have the same "performance capability." And, how do you establish fair and equitable perfomance measures?
All that aside, here's an even bigger problem with the merit pay plan. It doesn't address the problem with student performance, and worse, it isn't a good goal for teachers because it may not be achievable.
When teachers are losing as much as 30/40/50% or more of productive teaching time in the classroom because of issues of discipline and classroom management, telling them to “be more productive” and you’ll pay them more isn’t fair. It’s like asking them to go out in the last quarter of a losing basketball game, tell them they HAVE to win this one, and, oh, by the way, you’re tying both hands behind their backs. It’s not right to dangle a carrot in front of them, but not providing them with the tools that will help them achieve the goal. And it’s not all that effective either when you consider that most teachers leave the classroom because they are sick of the problems with classroom management and disruption – not with pay per se. You can’t pay people enough to stay in environments where they can’t be successful and where they don’t feel like their making a difference.
This is another "bandaid" that gets applied to the open wound of education, rather than deal with the underlying cancer itself. If we don't deal with the issues of student discipline in a way that WORKS, then nothing else we do will be effective
I say "in theory" because there are several problems with the plan. Some have to do with how you "measure" performance, with several arguments such as "gee, how can you provide a fair baseline" when not all classes have the same "performance capability." And, how do you establish fair and equitable perfomance measures?
All that aside, here's an even bigger problem with the merit pay plan. It doesn't address the problem with student performance, and worse, it isn't a good goal for teachers because it may not be achievable.
When teachers are losing as much as 30/40/50% or more of productive teaching time in the classroom because of issues of discipline and classroom management, telling them to “be more productive” and you’ll pay them more isn’t fair. It’s like asking them to go out in the last quarter of a losing basketball game, tell them they HAVE to win this one, and, oh, by the way, you’re tying both hands behind their backs. It’s not right to dangle a carrot in front of them, but not providing them with the tools that will help them achieve the goal. And it’s not all that effective either when you consider that most teachers leave the classroom because they are sick of the problems with classroom management and disruption – not with pay per se. You can’t pay people enough to stay in environments where they can’t be successful and where they don’t feel like their making a difference.
This is another "bandaid" that gets applied to the open wound of education, rather than deal with the underlying cancer itself. If we don't deal with the issues of student discipline in a way that WORKS, then nothing else we do will be effective
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