by John Devera

Created on: August 08, 2008

Merit pay does not work.

Merit pay does not work for a simple reason, there is no incentive to earn merit pay when the regular salary of a competent and experienced teacher is inadequate. One becomes an exceptional teacher by learning one's craft and gaining the expertise and maturity and techniques of an exceptional teacher. But teachers, at present have no incentive to even stay in the profession. After five years of education, a rigorous certification process, up to three competency and expertise tests, contractual commitments to continuing education. And when one gets into the classroom one is told that one can only receive a salary commensurate to one's qualifications if one achieves the status of an exceptional teacher?

Is it any wonder that nearly half of all teachers quit the profession forever within the first three years. One enters into the profession because of a commitment to educating the youth. One stays in the profession because of passion. Many leave it because teachers are under-paid, over-worked and unappreciated. Teachers have little or no control over career advancement. They are often required to do adjunct duties for which they receive no pay. If they coach, they receive for all these extra hours the equivalent of less than $2 an hour.

If merit pay is based on student test scores, then the only guarantee of receiving the merit pay is if you teach the motivated and gifted students. If you teach low-level, unmotivated, chronically absent or academically challenged students, it doesn't matter how hard you work, you just won't receive the same kind of results. The result will be teacher burn-out, and already endemic problem.

If merit pay is based on teacher evaluation by administration, it becomes a tool for the coercion of teachers to grant passing grades to failing quarterbacks, to teach only the very least controversial topics and books, to be an administration toady with a supple spine and ingratiate oneself to the power structure.

If merit pay is based on student evaluations, look for a continuation of grade inflation and more egregious examples of unsavory teacher-student fraternization. Teachers cannot teach difficult disciplines if they are competing in a popularity contest.

Merit pay fails utterly by any standard one chooses to use. Compare it to a professional team of athletes. If the Cowboys paid their second string, bench-sitting athletes as much as Texas pays their teachers, the most mediocre of athletes would require a reduction of nearly 80% of their pay. We offer merit pay to athletes, but it works so well because even the mediocre athletes who do their jobs as best they can, who devote the time, sweat and effort to their work, receive rewarding salaries. If we paid all athletes minimum wage, and then rewarded the winning teams, professional athletics would not improve. Neither will education improve if we give prizes to winning teachers without rewarding the teachers who do extremely difficult work in the many classrooms throughout our nation.

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