by Michael Patrick

Created on: August 10, 2008

Why do we work? To be compensated for performing a service that others value. It is "trade." Is it not a cultural paradigm that we are paid more for what we do well or less for what we do poorly? Superior performance is rewarded. Mediocrity receives mediocre remuneration. Simple.

I've never understood why merit pay for teachers is such a contentious argument. Why not give superior teachers merit pay? Doesn't that help new or lackluster teachers see that there are benefits to improvement?

I applaud and support teachers. I contribute to classroom needs and join School Action Committees. I'm also old enough to have altered my criticisms of my "bad" teachers and "good" teachers and the greater number of those who made no difference at all.

Bad or good is relative and we must be careful. We can all remember the "bad" teacher; the one who didn't give us a break, who made us work, who embarrassed us for not paying attention. And we can all remember that special teacher who inspired us, made us want to learn and achieve, made a class or a subject so fascinating we couldn't get enough. Interestingly, these two examples are very similar. They are the "best" ones and should be given merit pay.

They are unlike the teachers who droned through class every day or were bored to tears or who had no depth of subject matter, or who cracked jokes all day, or who didn't give us homework or call on us in class, who graded easily and we didn't learn a thing. Oh, how we loved them. Such teachers should be denied merit pay.

We have a crisis of teachers in the US; more students than teachers to teach them. We instituted our mandatory public education system in the early Twentieth Century, a great idea that created the strongest middle class of any nation in history. But in the last fifty years we've done these things:

1. Increased our multicultural and multilingual population making standard teaching more difficult.

2. Reduced the qualifications of teachers to bring more into the public education system.

3. Given all public school teachers "tenure" to keep them from leaving for other vocations.

4. Established unions to protect the interest of all educators regardless of talent or commitment.

5. Caused money to be the sole objective and reward of education.

Don't forget the "Bell Curve." While Harvard psychologist Richard Hernstein purported that IQ was a predictor of success, there is a more relevant observation to be made from his work; that in every discipline, there will be a few who

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