MERIT PAY ACCELERATE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT

Merit Pay Accelerate Elementary School Improvement

Merit Pay Accelerate Elementary School Improvement

Introduction

The paper discuss the two opposing perspectives providing the supportive evidence one is of Pro by Steven Malanga, from “Why Merit Pay Will Improve Teaching” and the Con is by Al Ramirez, from “How Merit Pay Undermines Education”.

Issue Summary

The issue of school merit pay, or pay-for-performance, for teachers is certainly not new, but is one of the bitterest controversies in today's school reform debate. The current push to improve public education and to hold individual schools more accountable for achievement has rekindled the argument over merit pay as a replacement for reward system is primarily on seniority and earned course credits. Although some forms of merit plans were widely used in the early part of the 20th century, the economic depression of the 1930s prompted conversions to uniform pay scales. Teachers unions, which gained strength throughout the remainder of the century, were not supportive of incentive pay schemes. Since the 1980s, and particularly since the passage of the "No Child Left Behind" legislation, pressure for an accountability system containing specific rewards for teachers and schools that meet desired outcomes has vastly increased. The matter of how to appropriately and fairly evaluate teacher performance remains a major stumbling block in the adoption of merit pay plans. Merit pay programs are often discontinued because of one or more of the following reasons (Reg Weaver, 2006):

They are unfairly implemented

Teachers unions refuse to endorse them

They create poor teacher morale

Legislators who support them leave office

They're simply too costly and difficult to administer

Then economists viewed as offered by Darius Lakdawalla in "Quantity Over Quality," Education Next. He contends that schools have been hiring more teachers in an effort to reduce class sizes but have not been rewarding them for quality performance.

The US is saying to its educators that they are not really important; if we thought they were important, we would pay them a larger share of our gross domestic product, as other nations do. Yet, Berliner is also worried that merit pay plan based primarily on student achievement could lead to teach teachers doing the wrong thing in their classrooms-cheating and narrowing the curriculum. Some guidelines for the fair evaluation of teacher performance (Al Ramirez, 2001) .

There must be trust between the administration and the faculty

Judgments must be treated with confidentiality

There must be recognition that both what is valued and how it is measured will vary by context

Teachers who do not perform satisfactorily and do not respond to supportive intervention should not be rehired

Why Merit Pay Will Improve Teaching

According to (Malanga, 2001) Merit pay is rewarding teachers for what they actually achieve in the classroom as opposed to rewarding them based on seniority and the number of ed-school credits they have. This has been the pay system used in America since the 1920's. Education reformers argue that merit pay will encourage good teaches and drive away bad teachers which will in turn improve under performing schools (Al ...