So, as you can see, the Bush presidency was one that tried to focus on education such as the passing of the no child left behind act, and who can forget his state of the union address the beginning of this year (you know about the AP teachers, and science teachers etc.) Anyway, one of Bush's proposals was a Merit pay Pilot Program for fiscal year 2006. To fund this program, he proposed a 500 million dollar teacher incentive fund. The house passed bill 3010 to provide for this fund but the senate has yet to pass a bill like this.
So the question is why have the president and house supported this program, but not the senate? Clearly, there are positives and negatives to the merit pay program. First of all, merit pay is a good idea because it gets teachers in schools to teach harder subjects such as math and science when without these incentives, they would have gone to the private market. Also, merit pay is shown to keep teachers in the profession longer and also decrease absenteeism which will positively affect student performance.
So why is merit pay a bad idea? Well, first of all as seen from the 500 million dollar budget proposal, merit pay cost money. Just another reason to put our country into more debt. Even though the proposal said that the money would be taken out of additional education funding, how long could that possibley last if the program grows with age? Also, merit pay has bad side effects for students and teachers alike. In desire to get more money, teachers might not focus on higher end or lower end students, but those in the middle who they think they can improve. Also, because many merit pay programs have quotas on the number of teachers who can receive merit pay, there will be "hiding" of teaching secrets and strategies between teachers. Also, parents might begin to request certain teachers or file lawsuits if they believe their child received inferior education from a non-merit teacher.
So, just like everything in life, merit pay has its goods and bads. I personally think the positives outweigh the negatives. I believe that education is the best way to keep America in a viable position in the global economy, and if it takes giving teachers a little bit of cash to improve our education, then so be it.
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Another thing about merit pay is some teacher might go into the fields that pay more without any interest in them. WHich hurts the student the most. My mother is a teacher and although she thinks that teachers should be evaluated so they have teachers that are able to teach, she does not believe this is a good program. My mom has a doctorate and yet is scared for her job.
Some teachers are worried that because of this system the younger teachers will be rewarded because most of them have a speciality, and the older ones do not. The younger ones have more time to go into the fields and learn the stuff required for merit pay.
Also when teaching younger children how does this come into play? With basis elementary education degrees I think anyone could teach addition. I know I have helped out in my mom's class teaching sometimes.
I do not think merit pay is fair because what about teachers in private schools where the parents pay for their kids to go, does that mean that the state will also in essence fund them when it comes to teachers.
Private schools will be hurt the most by this because they have the most teachers teaching out of speciality.
I think this would hurt the schools more than anything because the teacher that cared the most about social studies and truly knew the most, but his speciality was in a different area would no longer be able to teach that.
I completely agree. Merit pay is not a good idea.
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~I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.~
To jenni,
Thanks for your perspective. It's really cool to see the issue from someone who has inside experience. It has made me reconsider my biases. Though I still support merit pay, I definitely see your point and it did make me question my stance
I agree, education is very important. Today in our society, to be successful, you need a strong education background. I believe that the government needs to spend more money on education, it will only benefit the society. Paying teachers more, might be an incentive to people to become teachers, and the people who already are teachers to become great teachers.
Today I attended this colloquim, and it was about the nation's budget, and fiscal year. Did you know that they only spend like 10-13% (if I remember right) on education. To me I believe they should be spending more on education, then some of the others things are spending money on. I know Social security, health care, and national defense are all important parts of the budget, but what about education.
Bush passed the ridiculus No Child Left Behind Act, which I don't believe is serving it's purpose it was supposed to, and hasn't used all of the alloted monies that the act has been granted. Instead of passing an act that doesn't serve its purpose, why don't they allot more monies to education as a whole?