Merit pay
From Sunshine Review
Merit pay (sometimes called “pay for performance”) refers to any system in which compensation is partly based on an evaluation of the employee's job performance, as distinct from seniority. The evaluation may be based either on measurable factors like changes in student test scores, supervisory judgment or a combination of factors, some measurable and some subjective. A merit pay increase may take the form either of a one-time performance bonus, a salary increase or advancement on the district salary schedule.
Merit pay, while standard practice in the private sector, is almost non-existent in public education. This is partly attributable to fierce union opposition and partly to the real difficulty of determining an appropriate basis for evaluating teacher performance. Student tests scores are the most commonly suggested performance measures.
[edit] Varieties of merit pay plans
Some merit pay plans are designed to reward outstanding work by individual teachers. Others are based on the assumption that student progress depends on the cooperative work of a teaching team and therefore lead to bonuses or pay increases to the entire staff of a particular school (sometimes including non-professional staff).
Merit pay should not be confused with pay for achieving certain credentials, whether advanced degrees or certifications based on peer evaluations of portfolios. Nor should it be confused with skill-based pay, which involves higher salaries for teachers with scarce qualifications (e.g., ability to teacher honors calculus) or “hardship pay” for accepting certain difficult assignments (e.g., to schools in low-income areas).
[edit] Claims and counter-claims
Proponents of merit pay contend that rewarding high performance leads to improved outcomes in virtually all areas of human activity. They do not deny that teachers are motivated by many factors other than money. They do contend that money is one such motivator and that merit pay is more likely than seniority to encourage systemic improvements, whatever its effects on a given individual. They point out that failure to reward good teaching is likely to keep many talented people from becoming teachers at all, resulting in a profession whose average level of talent is lower than would otherwise be the case.
Opponents of merit pay emphasize the difficult of designing appropriate measures of teaching quality. Plans that focus on rewarding individual teachers may spur envy and morale problems, lowering the level of collegiality on which good schools depend. Plans that reward group performance (e.g., entire elementary schools) are likely to result in favoring schools with more resources or, over time, inflate costs across the board with few demonstrable benefits. They may also create incentives for collusion and cheating. In any case, the amount of testing required (and the monitoring required) are claimed to be expensive and a doubtful use of tax money.
