I have very mixed feelings about
merit pay accelerating school improvement. In theory, the idea sounds really
great: the greater teachers get paid more, and the teachers who are no longer
“excellent”, will no longer want to work in the district. This sounds all good
and fun until it becomes a huge popularity contest. No matter where you are and
if you do not want to believe it: all authority plays favorites. This merit pay
is supposed to be used to help motivate teachers to be great in order to be
paid more. Although I do believe something needs to be done about the poor
preforming schools and the bad teachers, I do not know that this is the best
one.
Charlotte Danielson’s
approach to this is evaluating the teachers and helping them to grow as
educators. If we follow her approach, then the students and teachers would both
benefit from it. Evaluating teachers could be a good start. If you evaluate
them and force them to do more professional development and incorporate those
techniques into the classrooms, then they might have a shot at improving rather
that just telling them they can never get paid more. Because I believe in
people, I really think that there is some way that we could help the teachers
want to be better, rather than just bribing them with money. Although money is
nice, it really isn’t everything. If you can make the teacher regain
perspective and be passionate about what they are doing, then money doesn’t
really matter as much. I definitely think that something needs to be done about
the schools that are not preforming well, but I do not think that the merit pay
is always a good idea. I think that the biggest reason I do not like this is
because of how many people play favorites in every business setting. Even if
they are not trying to play favorites, people always make friends with the
right people and often take away recognition from the people who truly are
amazing at what they do. It is important that people in the professional world
make good connections, but it is not fair to people who never got the chance
to. The new teachers or the ones who are older with new administration might
have trouble getting the right connections with these people. It should not be
about bribing people with money, it should be about making these people care
about what they do. There are plenty of people out there that just need a push
to excel at their job. This does not have to be money at all. Targeting these
people who are favorites is not the answer and the ones who really do work
their butt off are more likely to slack off when they are not being recognized
for their accomplishments. I think that something definitely needs to be done
to motivate these teachers, but playing around with the money that is already
barely there is not a good idea.
