Teacher Merit Pay

by Valerie Nelson | More from this Blogger

24 Jul 2006 04:29 PM

One of the most heated issues in education over the past few years has been the idea of merit pay for teachers. The idea of merit pay is not a new one-businesses have used bonuses and other incentives for years to reward a job well done or to try to improve efficiency and output of their product. Discussions for teacher merit pay have been underway for at least fifteen years. The strength of the teacher union and an enormous multi-tiered governmental system that is used to the current pay structure have loudly opposed such a change.

The Cincinnati Ohio school system created a merit pay system in 1999 and found it to be so successful that the Board of Education and teachers union both formally adopted the system. Other locations such as the State of Iowa and Denver Colorado are in the process of utilizing a pilot program and/or have adopted some form of incentive pay for teachers. Interestingly, Des Moines Iowa and Denver were two of the first cities to institute a salary scale for teachers back in 1921.

Proponents of merit pay believe that offering bonuses for successful classrooms will improve the overall educational product, produce healthy competition amongst teachers for prime positions and among schools within and outside of the district. In addition the merit pay system will encourage young teachers to stay in their profession for a longer amount of time. This is extremely important, since 50% of all new teachers change careers within five years. Teaching is a terribly important job and not for the fainthearted. High performers should be compensated for their efforts.

Opponents of the merit system believe that the process is too subjective and unfair to teachers who may be excellent, but have a classroom with several challenged learners. In addition, effective teaching is a team effort throughout a student's school career and not fully dependant upon one school year for success. Teachers unions note that there is not an effective way to measure a teacher's success. Test scores have been determined to be an unfair measurement tool by people on both sides of the argument.

What do you think? Do you think merit bonuses are a good way to increase teacher performance and ultimately student academic achievement?

Learn more about Valerie Nelson

Valerie is a Families.com blogger, freelance writer and small business owner. Valerie helps non-profit organizations with fundraising through grant development for their programs and projects.

View Full Profile | More from this Blogger

mommytotwo (526) 24 Jul 2006 05:31 PM

This is a great subject! Coming from a special education teaching background, I firmly believe that if a merit system is introduced, then there needs to be something for teachers of special education and general education teachers who have a class full of learning disabled or other special education students. After all, that classroom, and the special education classroom aren't likely to see growth that other teachers may see. I also believe that it will result in teachers trying to refuse to take children they know are in special education, because they run the risk of not receiving any incentive pay. Thanks for the great blog. I am all fired up about this topic again! My previous school in which I had taught, had just started discussing this shortly before I stopped teaching. Let me tell you, in the school I taught, a low-income school with very little parent involvement and the highest amount of free lunch students and the highest number of special education students in the district, the teachers at my school weren't pleased with the possibility. It seemed to be something that would hurt the teachers at our school and in the end, hurt the kids that attend there, as they would lose good teachers who choose to leave and teach at a more affluent school where they stood the chance of earning the incentive pay because of the difference in student populations. It was a very sensitive subject. Great post!

Valerie Nelson (1149) 25 Jul 2006 07:36 AM

Kaye,

Thanks for your enthusiastic response. What measurement could be used, do you think, for teacher of special education students if they were to institute merit pay? I guess I could ask-how do you know when you are doing a good job with special needs kids? What goes on in the classroom on the days you go home and say-now that was a great day! Can that type of success be voiced to the administration in a way they would understand?