by Stephany Elsworth

Created on: December 31, 2010

In theory, merit pay attracts and retains the most talented teachers, motivates teachers to become better at their profession, and satisfies the public's desire for accountability in the classroom by raising test scores. In practice, merit pay for teachers does a serious injustice to both teachers and students by only rewarding teachers who are lucky enough to have high-performing students in their classes.

The students that enter an average public-school classroom are a motley bunch. Some are gifted, while others have special learning needs. Many children do not speak English, while others have never been exposed to print and are unaware of the basic principles of literacy. Some are exceptionally well-behaved, while others have poorly-developed social skills or disruptive behaviors. Teachers generally do not get to choose their students. They take each child as they come, regardless of that child's prior learning or background, and encourage the child to learn to the best of his or her ability.

Most campus administrators attempt to divide students evenly so that each teacher has an approximately equal number of high-performing, average and low children at the beginning of each school year. However, any teacher can attest to the fact that this practice only levels the classes for a short period of time. A teacher can have five high-performing students in October, for example, and lose three of them by April. The incoming students that fill their seats are placed according to available room regardless of their academic performance. In the end, a classroom that was more or less balanced in September may have a disproportionate amount of high or low students by spring.

As a result, test scores do not necessarily reflect the amount of work or the quality of work performed by a teacher. An instructor who has several high-performing or gifted learners in her classroom will most likely have higher test scores than a teacher whose students are less academically gifted. The teacher with the lower-performing students may work late every night designing specialized lesson plans, work intensively with her students, or demonstrate teaching skills that go far above and beyond exemplary. Even if her students double or triple their knowledge in the space of that school year, her test scores will still not be as high as the teacher who was lucky enough to have the advanced-level children in her classroom, despite the fact that the advanced children learned far less and put

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