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No. A teacher should not receive pay based on the success of her students. If you want to encourage your teachers, increase their salary altogether. If a teacher will receive more pay if and only if her students do well on a certain test and then gets a class of apathetic, hopeless students, then she will be less likely to try because she knows she will not be able to help enough. In big public schools where the resources are low, the teachers might become just as apathetic as the students.

You might also run into testing fraud. I know this is a difficult concept to understand, but people will do anything for money. If a teacher's salary relies on students' performance, then he or she might just fill the students in on what to answer for major test questions.

Another reason for this plan's emanate failure is the demographics. Big public schools in huge cities already pay teachers below average salaries. These schools, as history shows, generally do worse on standardized tests; therefore, the teachers would not receive the merit pay. The rich suburban school districts, which already pay teachers much more, generally do better on standardized testing. The teachers in these communities would receive more merit pay. Basically, the rich would get richer and the poor would get poorer. Although the idea is that this merit pay would motivate the teachers in poor school districts, it would just further demoralize them, setting them even farther back.

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