by Olivia Kay

Created on: July 23, 2010

MERIT-BASED PAY FOR TEACHERS:  IS IT REALLY A GOOD IDEA?

Are students learning what they need to during their school years to develop to their full potential as adults and effectively contribute in society?  This is a question that has been asked frequently in recent years by local boards of education, state and national educational departments, career and industry leaders, government officials, and countless others.  Are our schools failing our students?  Are teachers doing their jobs?  Are national, state, and local standards being followed in every school?  While school administrators and educators tend to believe that they are doing the very best they can with the resources they are allotted, average standardized test scores and the skills students are bringing to colleges and universities are telling another story.  In order to raise scores and create improved learning environments, one idea has been to use merit-based pay, a system where teachers would be either rewarded or punished based upon the scores that their students receive on state assessments. 

What is Merit-Based Pay?

Merit-based pay is the process of paying teachers based upon student performance.  Many American school districts have experimented with paying teachers based upon performance in one form or another in the past century, however many of these merit-based pay programs have come in waves of popularity and slowly disappeared from the radar as if they never existed.  Almost all school districts currently pay their teachers based upon schedules of the number of years of experience they have and degrees they have earned.  Many educational researchers believe that this is not the best system for developing and retaining quality teachers, however these same researchers have sharply conflicting ideas when it comes to how the pay system should change and what a system of merit pay should look like.  Some educational professionals are very interested in the prospect of merit pay as they feel teachers who put forth outstanding effort in the classroom will be appropriately rewarded, while others dread it, mostly because they feel that such pay will be based too heavily upon the results of student-proficiency tests (Glenn 1-2). 

Who will potentially be affected by merit-based pay systems?  All teachers and other educational professionals in schools who are paid based upon a teacher’s contract will be affected by such

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