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Essays on the pros of merit pay for teachers
Essays on the pros of merit pay for teachers
Teachers being underpaid
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Effective teachers are inadequately rewarded in the United States. School districts, such as those in California, are just starting to implement merit pay. According to a study conducted by the National Center of Performance Incentives (NCPI), only about 500 school districts out of the 14,000 districts in the US implement merit pay for teachers. These numbers do not include private schools. Unfortunately, teachers, parents, and students hurt because many schools, private and public, base teacher pay on seniority and degrees rather than achievement and performance. Under such a system, novice teachers, are laid off during budget shortages. Moreover, with the current “single salary schedule” system, teachers are inadequately paid, especially when compared to other professions. Because the single salary schedule creates many issues, a solution needs to be proposed. Merit pay, a system based on performance, solves such issues. With this system, teacher performance outweighs teacher seniority. As a result, quality teachers will be rewarded adequately in terms of money and recognition. Outstanding teachers will no longer face unreasonable layoffs and will finally be paid more than their ineffective peers. 1. Teachers Play a Significant Role in the Education System Teachers are instructors, tutors, and evaluators. That being said, teachers play a significant role in the education system. They must not only understand the material they are teaching, but instead, they must also be able to teach it to the students. Such a task is difficult and requires skills, especially when the students are uncooperative. Also, teachers do more than lecturing. They often plan their curriculum accordingly so that students get the most out of the lesson... ... middle of paper ... ..." Making Teacher Incentives Work. American Enterprise Institute, 28 June 2011. Web. 7 Apr. 2014. Dillon, Sam. "An Annual Rite, School Layoff Notices Seem More Dire." The New York Times. The New York Times, 30 Mar. 2011. Web. 15 May 2014. "Fact Sheet: The Race to the Top." The White House. The White House, 04 Nov. 2009. Web. 15 May 2014. "The New Mayor and Teachers." The New York Times. The New York Times, 01 Dec. 2013. Web. 07 Apr. 2014. Startz, Dick. Profit of Education. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2010. Print. Stewart, Joshua. "Race to the Top Means Merit Pay for Teachers." GPB News. GPB News, 20 Jan. 2011. Web. 15 May 2014. Strauss, Valerie. "‘I Have Had Enough’ – Veteran Teacher Tells School Board." Washington Post. The Washington Post, 10 Mar. 2013. Web. 07 Apr. 2014. What Do We Know About Merit Pay? Issue brief no. 20. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 May 2014.
With the low expectations of teachers, students are limited in their ability to learn. As discussed before, it is difficult to predict how well a teacher will do at their job before they begin working. This creates doubt when hiring anyone, and employers may not know if who they are hiring is the right choice. If teachers are judged by not only the basic requirements met, but also their interpersonal skills and how well they are able to teach in a positive manner, there will hopefully be less mediocre teachers hired. In the same way, both an advanced teacher and an average teacher are paid the same wages, which creates a flaw in education. Even more, there should not be average teachers in the workforce if all teachers are paid the same. Though this harms the advanced teachers, who deserve more than they earn, it also harms the students, as they are taught at a lower level by the inadequate teachers. Gladwell mentions these flaws in his article, but he also explains the traits good teachers should have, which brings a strive forward in this issue. Because of this, it is clear America must be more selective and strict when hiring
Salary schedules for public school teachers are almost a common feature in public school districts. These schedules largely determine the salaries for the teachers. A single district schedule sets the pay for hundreds of thousands of teachers in thousands of schools (Besharov 1). The key factor that influences the pay for the teachers in the salary schedules include experience in terms of years and the total number of graduate course works that a teacher has completed. This paper will look at the cons and pros of the salary schedules in terms of an economic point of view.
5) Shropshire, Kenneth. “College Athletes Deserve Pay, Olympians Get Paid. So Do College Coaches, Why Not The Stars?” USA Today, Final Edition. 18 Sept. 1996. Sec. A p: 15.
Figlio, David N. "Teacher Salaries and Teacher Quality." Economic Letters 55.2 (1997): 267-71. Sciencedirect.com. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.
Wilkerson, J. L. (1995). Merit pay-performance reviews: They just don't work! Management Accounting, 76(12), 40. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/229841643?accountid=32521
Teachers help students meet the purpose of life needs by teaching them the things they need to know to be successful adults. Teachers do not teach just the basic core subjects, but they teach children how to be responsible and respectful. They teach them the things they need to know to be good citizens in society.
The oversite committee then evaluates the success of their money allocation and incentivize the success of the public school’s education. “Americans do not appear ready to pay the price.” (Barber, p. 215) Money is the most powerful motivator, and if the success of school districts reaps the benefits of more financial resource, educators will fight to be the best. This new desire to be the best, is possible with the equalization of opportunity from the allocation of funds to the poorer schools. The race to the top would already be won by the larger, richer, and more powerful school districts without those foundational funds. “Because we believe in profits, we are consummate salespersons and efficacious entrepreneurs.” (217) Barber’s essay supports the idea of incentivized results. Not only would districts compete with other schools, but their standards would be raised year after year in consequence to the oversite of the
Some people believe merit pay creates competition and favoritism. They seem to think school systems will pay some teachers more than others and create a “battle” for money. In Merit Pay: Good for Teachers? By Gary Drevitch, one interviewee states, “I know it’s worked in some places, but I shudder at the idea of teachers being in competition with each other.” None of these problems will occur if school districts implement a successful, unbiased system. Another issue society presents when it comes to merit pay comprises of differentiating a “good” teacher from a “bad” teacher. School districts can easily evaluate a teacher’s ability to educate students by the work teachers put into helping students. Student’s reactions to a teacher’s class can also help evaluate teachers. More often than not, students will love a class where the teacher clearly demonstrates lessons, explain procedures, and adds elements of fun. On the other hand, students typically dislike classes where the teacher only comes in for a paycheck. This attitude is displayed by their lackadaisical teaching style. Other people argue that money should not be the reason why people go into teaching. Richard Barbieri, author of Merit Pay? argues that money is not an external motivator, but the substance of a teacher’s motivation. Financial incentives will cause employees to work harder
Bad teachers poison American secondary education. Incompetent teachers frustrate and damage children. The culprit is tenure: allowing teachers to keep their jobs indefinitely, after a trial period. Historically, tenure protected teachers from being fired on whim or without reason in a volatile job climate. While this measure was once productive, tenure policies are now outdated, causing more harm than good. Tenure prevents bad teachers from getting fired, harming students and preventing school systems from maintaining the best teaching force possible.
Prostik, J. (1996). ‘ History of Teacher Pay and Incentive Reforms’, Journal of School Leadership,6, 3,265-89.
Duke, Daniel L., ed. Incentive Pay and Career Ladders For Today's Teachers. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990. 42-241. Grand Rapids Community College Database . Web. 6 Apr. 2014. .
A study conducted by Marguerite Roza, a University of Washington professor and a Gates Foundation Advisor, was reviewed by Jay P. Greene, a professor at University of Arkansas and a member of the George W. Bush Institute; it has shown that money in school systems is placed in places that differ from where educators say it will go. While teachers say that they want more funding for low-income individuals in the school system, most spending per student goes towards the students with higher incomes; similarly, other educators say that resources should be focused on core academic subjects such as history, reading, history, or math, but “per-pupil spending tends to be much higher for electives [and] extracurricular activities” (Greene). Also, teachers tend to be paid unequally; they are paid “according to their credentials, seniority, and ‘additional’ work assignments and not at all according to subject taught, number of students served, or the difficulty or importance of their assignments” (Greene). Since salary may be based on an educator’s past and not on their present, a more educated teacher may choose to serve a school or district that offers them more money. This means that the less-learned teachers with lower funding may generally end up teaching the low-income students, allowing for less pay for the subjects that these teachers teach. Schools like these, and the schools with the more experienced teachers, receive “slightly more funding from the district, with higher WSI (Weighted Student Index) by 0.01 and 0.04, respectively. In other words, these schools typically received 1 to 4 percent more than the district average, or $15,000 to $60,000 per school of 500 students in a district where the average school expenditure is $3,000 per pupil” (Guin et al). The inequality of expenditures in
The state’s new evaluation system was in response to administrators who produced, “superficial and capricious teacher evaluation systems that often don't even directly address the quality of instruction, much less measure students' learning” (Toch, 2008). Too often, the “good-ol-boy” attitude would insure mediocre educators would remain employed. Realizing this was often more the rule then the exception, the governor created educational mandates to focus, “on supporting and training effective teachers to drive student achievement” (Marzano Center, 2013). Initially, they expected the school districts and the teachers would have issues and experience growing pains, but in the end the goal was, “to improve teacher performance, year by year, with a corresponding rise in student achievement” (Marzano Center, 2013).
Further, the analysis reviews an article by Figlio and Kenny (2006) which is a documentation of students’ performance’s relationship with teachers’ performance incentives. The study utilizes United States data combining the authors’ survey that was conducted in 2000 with National Education Longitudinal Survey on students and schools in regard to teachers’ pay incentives. Finally, Nael (2011) is an article on an analysis of education incentive schemes through a review of empirical studies that evaluates educators’ performance pay programs. Thus, the article will provide a suitable review on designs of student’s achievements measures and teachers’ performance metrics.
Mir, S. (2011), Education woes: Shortage of teachers a threat to public schools, Tribune, 3 April.