Some of the biggest disputes against merit pay have all been disputed previously, in the 1980's. In the 1980's, global rivalry was undermining U.S. businesses and corporations, and in an attempt to stay viable, the merit pay system was put into place. The new system included awarding workers-based costumer service reviews, supervisor assessments and group achievements, things that may appear subjective or hard to gauge, the same condemnations thrown at merit system today. Barraged by disapproval and battered by the unions, the system nonetheless proved to be victorious. "After trial and error, half of all major American companies utilized similar merit pay incentives by the mid-1990s. The fact is, these incentive programs encouraged the employees to work hard and overcome challenges, and similar programs could do the same for America's teachers" (Wann, 2009).
There are many pros that can be said about adopting a merit pay-based system in the educational system. These include:
Americans value hard work and outcomes, and our capitalist system centers upon incentivizing such outcomes - most occupations offer bonuses and salary increases to excellent workers, why not teachers? The fact that a bad teacher and an excellent teacher earn the same wage just doesn't sit right with a lot of people.
Incentivized teachers will work harder and manufacture better outcomes - the straightforward likelihood of extra cash would most likely transform into smarter teaching and better outcomes for the students.
Merit Pay programs will help enlist and keep the nation's brightest minds - it's the unusual teacher who hasn't thought about leaving the classroom and entering the corporate world for the benefits of less hassle and more money. Particularly smart and effective teachers might think again about leaving the vocation if they felt that their extraordinary labors were being acknowledged in their paychecks.
Teachers are already poorly paid. Merit Pay would help deal with this inequality. -teaching is due for a rebirth of respect in this nation and the best performing teachers should be first in line for this monetary acknowledgment.
We are in the middle of a teacher deficiency - merit pay would motivate probable teachers to give the profession more thought as a feasible career choice, rather than a personal forfeit for the greater good. By attaching teaching wages to performance, the vocation would look more contemporary and plausible, therefore drawing in young college graduates to the classroom.
With American schools in emergency, shouldn't they be willing to try almost anything new in the hopes of making a change. "If the old ways of running schools and motivating teachers aren't working, plausibly it's time to think outside of the box and try merit pay. In a time of crisis, no valid ideas should be quickly denied as possible resolutions" (Lewis, 2011).
On the other side of the argument there are many things that can be said against implementing a merit pay system. These include:
Nearly everybody can agree that designing and monitoring a merit pay program would be a bureaucratic nightmare of roughly epic size - a lot of key questions would have to be sufficiently answered before educators could even think about putting into practice merit pay for teachers. Such discussions would certainly take away from the real objective which is to center on the kids and give them the best education feasible.
Good will and cooperation between teachers will be compromised - in places that have formerly tried deviations of merit pay; the consequences have frequently been unpleasant and counter-productive rivalry amid teachers. Where teachers once worked as a team and shared answers willingly, merit pay can make teachers take on a more only for me attitude. This would be unfortunate for the kids, in the long run.
Achievement is hard, if not impracticable, to define and measure -No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has already established how the different unleveled playing fields in the American education system intrinsically set up a wide assortment of standards and hopes. Take into consideration the varied needs of English Language Learners, Special Education Students, and low income areas, and it can quickly been seen why it would be opening a can of worms to classify standards of accomplishment for American schools when the stakes are money in the pockets of real teachers.
Opponents to merit pay argue that a better answer to the present educational emergency is to pay all teachers more - rather than devise and regulate a disorganized merit pay program.
High-stakes merit pay systems would without doubt support fraud and dishonesty. Educators would be monetarily motivated...
A great coalition of smaller firms aimed to defeat patronage and create an acceptable, predictable, regulatory environment; in other words, a credible commitment mechanism was needed, and politicians could supply this. This confluence of monitoring problem, change in political parties, and demand for security led to demand for a merit system that would offer legal security via impartial public agents, and that was less vulnerable to political manipulation (Shepherd,
This involves "changing the role of school personnel in such a way that the resulting organization is capable of adapting the program of a given school to meet the needs of the child" (Conte, 1972) (finally, someone remembers that schools are about students not teachers). If the "objective of any reform measure is to increase the potential of the learning environment and facilitate the learning process" then creative ideas
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Plus most teachers saw the pay for performance system as inevitable, and therefore wanted to be involved from the start of the plan (Gratz, 2005). The pilot faced many challenges. Not the least, the district was faced with the logistical challenge of linking the students in various databases to the teachers. The internal systems for tracking student progress by teacher simply didn't exist. In addition, non-academic staff members had to
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