Merit Pay: Insufficient solution to teacher salary problem

A majority of Americans agree that teacher salaries are insufficient for the hard work and dedication educators put forth. As a professional career that builds and shapes youth and plays a critical part in America’s value in the global market, the salaries have been inadequate and only continue to grow worse as they fail to keep up with rising inflation. Other professional careers requiring the educational background and degrees equivalent to teachers receive greater financial compensation even when their overall contribution to the nation is far less. So the thought of a merit pay, or pay for performance plan as a resolution to salary shortcomings is an insult. Merit pay systems are insufficient solutions to underpaid teacher salaries because they perpetuate too much emphasis on standardized-tests, undermine teamwork amongst teaching staff, and fail to increase salaries as a whole.

A majority of merit pay systems base teachers’ salaries on scores from standardized-tests resulting in inordinate amounts of time being focused on the test material. Standardized-tests focus solely on the subjects of reading, writing, and arithmetic, causing less attention to other courses such as arts, science, and history. The result eventually becomes repetitive drills and assignments that are believed to produce the highest test results. While basing a teacher’s salary on test scores promotes test preparation over educational learning, it also neglects teachers as a whole. With these tests as a basis for pay, how are teachers of history and art evaluated? More importantly, how are teachers of learning disabled children evaluated? Although many believe that merit pay is a bold, new idea, it was first attempted in England around 1710. England’s experiences found that in order to maximize financial rewards, teachers and administrators narrowed curriculums to the testable basics and were even found to have falsified results (Troen). The merit system was eventually ruled a failure and removed.

Initiating a pay for performance system would also create a competitive atmosphere in a system designed for collaborative effort, further deteriorating America’s educational system. Teachers would become unwilling to share their ideas and strategies with one another for fear of losing their portion of limited bonus funding. With the loss of teamwork in the system, educational value would diminish. Such was the case in Oregon between the mid-1970s to mid-1980s. Teachers became competitive over acquiring the best students in their classes, complained about evaluations based on non-objective data, and then suffered greater financial difficulties after budgets were cut decreasing the bonus limit further (“Teacher Merit”). Such competition should have no place in America’s educational system, where the main goal should be to educate youth, not protect what is already a minimal limited income.

Pay for performance systems attempt to increase a teachers output by offering incentive bonuses to overachieving individuals, but this continues to fail to raise salaries as a whole. While bonuses are generally welcomed as added income for extraordinary performances, it simply cannot be the sole plan for increasing underpaid salaries. The Miami Herald notes that newly-elected Governor Charlie Crist has proposed to increase funding for bonuses so that the top 25 percent of teachers will be awarded 10 percent instead of 5 percent awards. United Teachers of Dade President Karen Aronowitz puts this into perspective by stating, “That is like saying, ‘We’re going to give you dessert’ and you’re a starving person. Because where’s the main course? Just raise our salaries. You want to talk about performance pay after that? Fine” (Sampson). Additionally, this only addresses 25 percent of teachers in the state of Florida, excluding 75 percent of the states teachers from receiving these bonuses. The issue remains that teachers need a sufficient pay increase to compensate them for dedicating their careers to an instrumental function in American society. The pay issue needs to be addressed for 100 percent of teachers’ salaries.

Although there are many negative sides to the merit pay systems, many still find reason to believe that the single salary schedule is outdated and in need of a drastic change. Among these supporters are many first- and second-year teachers as well as other individuals who are concerned over teachers at the bottom of the pay scale. Fresh from college, armed with new ideas and teaching strategies, it’s believed they might make a greater impact on today’s youth than tenured teachers who use older or out-dated teaching strategies. For this reason they feel as though they deserve increases through a bonus system. The problem with this approach are the possibilities of over paying new strategies that only improve short term results while taking away from the tenured teachers that have spent a lifetime of work and continued education to consistently deliver great education.

Teachers are the backbone of their nation. Without their hard work and dedication to education, children wouldn’t gain the knowledge that they need to excel in the workforce, and America would cease to compete globally in a high tech marketplace. That is why it should be in the interest of every American to insure that the educational staffs are compensated. For a salary bordering poverty levels, a bonus incentive is an insufficient substitute to a pay raise. This is an even more increasing problem as annual pay increases are consistently lower than the rise of inflation. America should ask themselves, why should the educators that institute America in educational riches be forced to live in poverty themselves?

Source Reference:

Sampson, Hannah. “Cautious optimism for budget proposal.” Miami Herald, The(FL). P. 5B.

Teacher Merit Pay. 2 Sept. 1996. Oregon School Boards Association. 21 Mar. 2007. http://www.osba.org/lrelatns/perfpay/primerc.htm .

Troen, Vivian and Boles, Katherine C. “How ‘merit pay’ squelches teaching.” The Boston Globe 28 Sept. 2005. 20 Mar. 2007. http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2005/09/28/how_merit_pay_squelches_teaching/. .