I have never seen a topic that contains two words that strike as much fear and diverse opinions in teachers as merit pay. There are two distinct sides to this topic. On the pro side are usually state officials and some administrators, on the other are teachers. I chose the topic of merit pay for teachers for several reasons. The first is I enjoy reading the different economic theories that both sides use in arguing their points on merit pay. It is very interesting to see how some basic economic concepts are misused and misunderstood when money is at stake. As is often the case in studying economics, what appears to be common sense on the surface might not be when you take a closer look at the economic logic behind the argument. The second …show more content…
The pros include: the tenants of capitalism is to reward results, teachers will be driven to work harder, merit pay programs will help recruit and retain the best minds, underpaid teachers will have the chance to make more money, attracting more people to teaching, and if everything else has failed then why not try merit pay. The cons include: how a merit pay system would encourage teachers to cheat, the bureaucratic nightmare that would be created with trying to monitor a Merit Pay system, cooperation between teachers would be destroyed, and just pay teachers more instead of wasting it on a merit pay …show more content…
This too follows the capitalism argument that there has to be a benefit to attract a person to a job. In the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Henninger interviewed the Director of Education of a school in Arkansas that adopted a pay for performance program. At his offices in the capitol building, Director James calls himself an "advocate of pay for performance" for a couple of reasons. Financial incentives of some sort are needed, he says, to stop math and science teachers from jumping ship to industry. And school districts like Little Rock 's have to innovate fast because jobs and population are migrating internally, mostly into northwestern Arkansas. The Springdale district alone, he says, near Fayetteville and Bentonville, "hired 180 new teachers this year." Little Rock has to find a way to hold its best teachers (Henninger, 2005). This is another economic concept that is a key to capitalism. The logic is the more pay that is offered, the better the job applicants. This is also a basic concept in supply and demand. Henninger 's article continues with showing how happy the teachers were at the school. They were able to earn up to an extra $8600 for a total of $134,800. Some of the money was put into a general school pool and shared by support staff with include the custodians and cafeteria staff (Henninger, 2005). It would seem that Arkansas has
The oversite committee then evaluates the success of their money allocation and incentivize the success of the public school’s education. “Americans do not appear ready to pay the price.” (Barber, p. 215) Money is the most powerful motivator, and if the success of school districts reaps the benefits of more financial resource, educators will fight to be the best. This new desire to be the best, is possible with the equalization of opportunity from the allocation of funds to the poorer schools. The race to the top would already be won by the larger, richer, and more powerful school districts without those foundational funds. “Because we believe in profits, we are consummate salespersons and efficacious entrepreneurs.” (217) Barber’s essay supports the idea of incentivized results. Not only would districts compete with other schools, but their standards would be raised year after year in consequence to the oversite of the
The author states in “A New Deal for Teachers” that in America, especially in poorer school districts, teacher quality is lacking. In urban districts, out of the new teachers hired in the next three years, about half of them will quit (usually the quality ones). The recruitment of better teachers is, as the author says, the biggest problem in our education system. He states that he’s been told by urban teachers that many of their colleagues are incompetent. Contributing to this is that state requirements are very low, which allows poor quality teachers into schools. Miller explains that smart and competent people who want to be teachers, are getting more and more difficult to find. This is true mainly because there are fields of work that those
The first article that I chose to work with is “The Rubber Room” by Steven Brill. This article is published by The New Yorker on August 31, 2009. Brill is an American Lawyer and a journalist-entrepreneur. “The Rubber Room” is about how it is wasting the city’s money as teachers are placed in this room where all they do is just sit around and play games. They are placed in these as they are waiting for their case to be heard by an arbitrator which could take up to many years. While they are sitting in these rooms, these teachers are still getting paid which is a waste of the city’s tax money. Brill also talks about tenure and how once teachers have tenure they seem to slack off at their job because they know that they have job security as mentioned in the article “she was given tenure after her third year of teaching, and then, like ninety-nine per cent of all teachers before 2002, she received a satisfactory rating each year.” (Brill 2)
Some people believe merit pay creates competition and favoritism. They seem to think school systems will pay some teachers more than others and create a “battle” for money. In Merit Pay: Good for Teachers? By Gary Drevitch, one interviewee states, “I know it’s worked in some places, but I shudder at the idea of teachers being in competition with each other.” None of these problems will occur if school districts implement a successful, unbiased system. Another issue society presents when it comes to merit pay comprises of differentiating a “good” teacher from a “bad” teacher. School districts can easily evaluate a teacher’s ability to educate students by the work teachers put into helping students. Student’s reactions to a teacher’s class can also help evaluate teachers. More often than not, students will love a class where the teacher clearly demonstrates lessons, explain procedures, and adds elements of fun. On the other hand, students typically dislike classes where the teacher only comes in for a paycheck. This attitude is displayed by their lackadaisical teaching style. Other people argue that money should not be the reason why people go into teaching. Richard Barbieri, author of Merit Pay? argues that money is not an external motivator, but the substance of a teacher’s motivation. Financial incentives will cause employees to work harder
Researchers approaching the study of teacher retention using a cost-benefit theoretical framework from the field of economics believe teachers make choices to stay in their current positions, migrate to new positions in different schools either within or across districts, or leave the profession altogether by weighing opportunity costs. These researchers envision teachers comparing the costs, both overt (salary and benefits) and hidden (working conditions, family ties to the community, etc.), with the benefits of staying in their current positions (Grissom, 2010). When costs outweigh benefits, teachers choose to migrate to new positions or leave the profession.
With the low expectations of teachers, students are limited in their ability to learn. As discussed before, it is difficult to predict how well a teacher will do at their job before they begin working. This creates doubt when hiring anyone, and employers may not know if who they are hiring is the right choice. If teachers are judged by not only the basic requirements met, but also their interpersonal skills and how well they are able to teach in a positive manner, there will hopefully be less mediocre teachers hired. In the same way, both an advanced teacher and an average teacher are paid the same wages, which creates a flaw in education. Even more, there should not be average teachers in the workforce if all teachers are paid the same. Though this harms the advanced teachers, who deserve more than they earn, it also harms the students, as they are taught at a lower level by the inadequate teachers. Gladwell mentions these flaws in his article, but he also explains the traits good teachers should have, which brings a strive forward in this issue. Because of this, it is clear America must be more selective and strict when hiring
Salary schedules for public school teachers are almost a common feature in public school districts. These schedules largely determine the salaries for the teachers. A single district schedule sets the pay for hundreds of thousands of teachers in thousands of schools (Besharov 1). The key factor that influences the pay for the teachers in the salary schedules include experience in terms of years and the total number of graduate course works that a teacher has completed. This paper will look at the cons and pros of the salary schedules in terms of an economic point of view.
The first thing on Weber's list is that a profession is self-employed and provides a service to the community (Bennet & Le Compte pg. 150). One way to disagree with this statement is that teachers run off salaries, so they are not self-employed. Joel Spring offers statistics on average white-collar occupations. Per year teachers average $43,250, compare this with an attorney and it may make some cringe as they are making an average of $82,712 a year (Spring pg. 175). Salaries in education follow the natural law of supply and demand. Increasing incoming teaching pay will attract more to the field, but should administration be worried about attracting the new? I think they should focus more on losing the more experienced. They all are deserving of more. Although, I have to say, if it was about the money, most would not choose the teaching profession. It is about the children, which is why I prefer to look at the criteria through the classroom. Teacher's have a lot of freedom to teach as they please and conduct their classes as they see fit within the content standards that is. I have been in many classrooms where teachers use different methods to convey the material; some use PowerPoint, worksheets, quizzes, overheads, while others prefer discussions and essay writing. It is said that teachers make an average of 200 decisions per hour (class notes. October 11, 2004). They do o...
Communism has both advantages and disadvantages. As for the advantages, there are three main ones: equality, accessible social services, and no business monopolies. Since all resources are in the hands of the state, the society is a classless society so everyone is equal. Further, healthcare, employment, and education are available to all citizens. Everybody can get the education they need and be provided with health care.
Prostik, J. (1996). ‘ History of Teacher Pay and Incentive Reforms’, Journal of School Leadership,6, 3,265-89.
When was the last time that you saw a teacher sporting off a brand new Lexus? Or when was it that you heard of a teacher owning a ranch? The answer to this question is probably never. Although material possessions such as owning a luxurious home or driving an extravagant car might be chump change for people like the rich and famous, for teachers this kind of spending is literally an arm and a leg. Even simple necessities are out of reach with a teacher’s salary. The reason for this problem is due to our nation’s budget. Teachers along with others in the school system are underpaid and are not being adequately compensated for their services. Instead of rewarding teachers with higher pay the government is undermining their work. As a result, teachers are unable to buy that expensive car or even pay off that Honda that they bought when they were in college working for their teaching degree. School budgets must be increased immensely in order to insure the educational growth of students and the professional development of teachers. There are four main reasons that are discussed in this paper, as to why more money should be spent on education.
Although some people may argue that performance pay is good, performance/merit pay is bad because it will result in teachers doing much less personalizing of the curriculum, and spending that time doing only what things need to be taught in order to keep their student’s test scores up (so they will get paid more). One of the major cons of performance pay is that teachers would have less time personalising the curriculum, teaching the students what they need to be taught, and teaching other important but non-standardized subjects; then using that time teaching only the things they are required to teach to keep student test scores up so they will get paid more(What Do We Know about Teacher Pay-for-Performance?). This in turn will cause the students to have a harder time learning because instead of the teachers teaching what the students need to be taught and more time teaching what the people who don’t know what the students know think the students should be taught.
The analytical lens that will be constructed aims to allow for an interpretation of how students who are attempting to be upwardly-mobile are helped with moving beyond roadblocks that prevent mobility. This is mobility is achieved through a combination of adherence to meritocratic systems and the borrowing of cultural capital. I will argue that reproduction occurs when reliance on meritocracy in the educational system and the limited cultural capital of the student’s working-class parent/s are solely employed. In order to move beyond a mere reproduction of the parent’s social class, I argue that the student must interact with individuals or groups from higher social spheres who know how to activate cultural capital in specific instances
There is considerable debate over merit pay and the effect it has on employees within an organization. Psychologists believe merit pay is related to the incentive theory of psychology; people respond to rewards and with the proper motivation, it increases performance (Cherry). Employers consider merit pay an effective tool and a form of competition strategy for motivating employees to achieve positive performance outcomes. Many employers ignore the fact that incentive plans may motivate some individuals while others have high work ethics and do not need motivation. The intent of this paper is to discuss merit pay used by companies, the motivational factors on employees to reach high achievement, and the challenges that employees face due
When choosing ones profession there are always two important questions to ask yourself. Is it what you love doing, and is the pay going to be enough to support you. For me the second question has never had much of an impact on my decision, along with most others who are educators or wish to become one. Teaching is not a job that one chooses to be rewarded by the pay. It is a job that is chosen for the rewarding feeling of knowing that it is the most effective, and most enjoyable way one can change the world; therefore, if teachers are noble enough to sacrifice such a huge aspect just to better our future generations, then don’t you think they should be paid what they deserve?