Merit pay, or the idea of teachers getting paid more the better they teach, is yet another idea that will pull the plug on American public education, and send it down the drain even faster.
I offer the website below as a great explanation of why merit pay is simply a bad idea:
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/meritpay.htm
The first thing that comes to my mind, though, is what most people tend to forget when considering judging a teacher based on “how well they teach” (ie, the student’s performance): just because a student does badly doesn’t mean it’s the teacher’s fault. There are students who don’t want to learn, who refuse to learn, and nothing the teacher can do or say will change that—they are determined to fail. I see it in my class all the time. So you’re rewarding and punishing teachers for some things which are, in fact, outside their control—and awarding and punishing from very shaky grounds, because the evaluation methods of teachers are completely unfair.
That’s the other big problem that immediately comes to my mind, before I even went looking for professional opinions—how is the success of a teacher being measured? In order for it to be true success, it would have to be valued in qualitative, not quantitative ways, and the logistics of working that out, without wasting even more money in the process, are simply impossible.
I also strongly agree with Jenni’s comment over at this blog (first comment there): http://progressiveu.org/215817-should-we-have-merit-pay-for-teachers
If you have the time to read through the article at the url I provided first, please do so: I know it's long, but it’s an excellent article that makes the point well.
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thanks for your info, i'll read into it!!!