Merit Pay Research Paper

In education, the ultimate goal for every school is to increase student achievement, and this can’t be accomplished without effective administrators to lead the school and effective teachers to provide quality instruction. Hanushek stated, “It is becoming broadly recognized that quality teachers are the key ingredient to a successful school and to improved student achievement” (2007). With this known fact, rewarding and compensating quality teachers would definitely help in bringing about the desired outcome. Unfortunately, quality teachers are hard to find, and one of the many contributing factors may be a noncompetitive teacher salary. During this time of education reform, high-stakes testing and teacher accountability are putting the

Depending on the age of the teacher, the years of experience, or the type of students taught, thoughts about merit pay may differ. It is believed that rewarding teachers for their efforts and performance will bring more highly qualified people into the profession. Several supporters of merit pay say the system is motivating for many high-performers and helps with teacher retention. Superior teachers can be rewarded for their hard work. However, when merit pay is connected with standardized test scores, the majority of teachers aren’t in favor of it. If merit pay is based solely on student achievement test scores, it can’t be considered fair, equitable, or reliable. There are too many factors that could adversely affect the scores on one achievement test. In addition, simply using student achievement test scores to give out merit pay would deter teachers from working in lower performing schools or with special needs’ students. A combination of measures to determine teacher effectiveness for merit pay should be used when determining who should receive the compensation. In March 2011, Gov. Rick Scott signed The Student Success Act that required half of a teacher’s evaluation to be based upon student learning gains (Weldon, 2011). Fortunately, if a teacher was hired prior to 2011, there was an opt-out clause to remain on the traditional single salary schedule. Florida’s performance pay system had “no

Being at the top of the pay scale due to years of experience, choosing the performance based salary schedule would have cut my base, or guaranteed salary. At this point in my life, that is not an option. My yearly evaluation scores are the highest possible, but placing the other 50% of my evaluation on student test scores wasn’t worth the risk. I am not opposed to merit pay, but using student achievement test scores creates a sense of unfairness. If the over-arching goal in education is to improve student achievement, looking at everything that affects student achievement should be used to create an evaluation system that rewards teachers for their efforts, knowledge, training, etc. Using an evaluation system, like the National Education Association (NEA) has created, would definitely lead to improved student achievement. The NEA’s Professional Growth Salary Schedule focuses creating four salary scales and a quality evaluation structure that was developed with teacher input (Weldon, 2011). As an administrator, this system would be beneficial in retaining teachers and easily identifying teacher leaders. This system could also be adjusted and used for principal growth evaluations as well. In closing, this quote from former NEA President Dennis Van Roekel takes into account many of the topics we have read about in