Merit Pay For Teachers Essay

Many people wonder if teachers should or should not get paid more than they do. A lot of people believe that teachers should get paid more, but there are some that do not. Parents that want their kids to have a good education want teachers to get paid more. For example, P.V Derkachev said, “… teacher pay influences the quality of education.” (Derkachev 574). Teachers that get payed more would be more likely to perform better at their job and not mind the extra time that they have to do stuff outside of work to get everything done. Matt Barnum said, “Higher salaries --- even small bonuses ---- can and do keep some teachers in the classroom, and likely improve outcomes for their students.” (Barnum). The student is going to get taught better if teachers get paid more because the teacher will want to teach at the best of her ability which will help the student.

One of the main issues with merit pay for teachers is found in the manner in which it is measured. Most of the new performances pay laws and union contracts measure “effectiveness,” at least in part, by looking at the students’ test scores from one year to the next. One test score cannot paint a full picture of a student's accomplishment. Teachers unions have historically opposed merit pay, arguing that test scores are not an accurate measure of student achievement (Turner, 2010, para 15). Most teachers will report that a test will only show part of the picture. Standardized tests do not reflect life lessons, effective citizen traits, or character building traits that were taught that year. All of these traits thrive in an effective teacher’s curriculum.

“The education teachers receive isn’t good for anything and that advanced degrees aren’t worth additional compensation like, say, a physician or architect would get. “The field of education is less challenging than other academic concentrations,” it says. (“Are teachers paid too much? - The Washington Post”) According to research many believe that teachers are just paid babysitters. In fact, it is a big debate among the population because many question our teachers and the job that they do. Since some of the population seem to think that teachers are just overpaid babysitters let's give them the pay of a babysitter, give them the benefits that they deserve, and give them the time off

(Brimley 2008) However, to equalize funds and maximize cost quality relationships grants and incentives are good places to start. School districts have to find ways to hire knowledgeable and committed teachers. One way to draw the knowledgeable teacher is to offer stipends for teacher shortage areas and sign on bonuses. Districts must continue to offer some type of incentives to maintain good teachers. Teacher tenure is another great incentive but can sometimes cause good teachers to become too laidback. Tenure grants educators “a right, term, or mode of holding or occupying something of value for a period of time.” (Tenure) Basically, tenure in the education realm grants what some would call stability or even security.

Teacher compensation is one of many hot button issues in the race for K-12 public education reform in America. Google (2015), defines compensation as simply the money received by an employee from an employer as a salary or wages (Google). This definition is perhaps the simplest to understand, but fails to truly articulate the complex meaning of compensation. Most school divisions include salary, extra pay, benefits, and pension in their employee compensation package. Leonard Boswell (2015), former U.S. Representative, stated it best, when he said “The American Dream is one of success, home ownership, college education for one’s children, and have a secure job to provide these and other goals” (Brainy Quotes, n.d.). The American dream Boswell spoke of cannot be achieved through meager means, the question then is “Do the very people who help facilitate this dream for the country’s youth, deserve to achieve the dream as well?”

Merit pay is a term describing performance related pay. Its primary focus is used for helping teachers improve their performance by learning from each other. Merit Pay can take the form of a bonus or a permanent teacher salary increased. This motivates many teachers because they believe they are being evaluated more fairly than traditional evaluation. Merit pay is important to study because it’s a one of the most controversial issue in the field of education and it does have an effect on school finance in the future. We should be concerned about using merit pay in our school system because most professions offer bonuses and salary increases for their exemplary employees why should the education profession be any different? Shouldn’t we try and use incentives as we do with our students to motivate teachers to give their very best in educating our future leaders of tomorrow. Merit pay will recruit and retain some of the nation’s brightest mind. Many people who have the capability to teach our students refused to do so due to teacher pay but with merit pay many of these individuals may consider working in the education profession.

In 2013, the average annual salary of a teacher in the United States was 56,383 dollars. This is for all grades before college. it varies from an average of 75,279 dollars in New York, to an average of 39,580 in South Dakota (How Much Teachers Get Paid — State by State). That is a huge difference in pay for the exact same job. If the test results of students were equal to the teacher’s pay, we would have a much more concrete way of paying the teachers. If the state’s economy is struggling nowadays, they don’t have the money to pay the teachers what they deserve, but in this new way, they will be required to give the teachers their hard earned money. In every other job in the United States, you get paid based on your performance. With teachers, the principal does not have enough time to evaluate every teacher and pay them based on how well they did. If the teachers were paid based on the tests, there would finally be a way to evaluate how well they taught the students. The less effective teachers will be pushed out of the system, while the strong ones

Those who are in favor of teacher merit pay systems feel as though the use of this system can eliminate the possibility of seniority outweighing high performance. They believe that those teachers in merit pay systems would be made to perform better in the classroom and demonstrate great teaching skills. Although there is some truth to this idea, it should not be accepted in the argument of teacher merit pay. In the Christian Science Monitor Reg Weaver stated merit pay systems would warrant “an adherence to some type of evaluative standard “ This means that teacher evaluations would consists mainly of the scores from

Lurking over our great country is a troubling issue that is plaguing the professional educational workforce. When compared worldwide, American teachers work the most hours, yet are paid in the lowest brackets when related to the top 32 nations (Teachers Pay). In addition, when you compare a teacher’s salary to other four year degree salaries, teachers are among the 5 lowest paid degrees (O’Shaughnessy). Not only are the salaries among the lowest in the American workforce, a typical teachers at home workload exceeds all other professional jobs by 20% (Current). Furthermore, teachers were only given a 2.3% salary raise in 2009. Yet the rate of inflation rose to 3.1% causing a loss in purchasing power and creating a hardship on the

One of the greatest Soviet leaders, Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, once commented that teachers are the engineers of human souls. With the rise of globalization, an increasing number of students are choosing to study aboard, especially in the United Kingdom. The importance of keeping and improving the overall quality of teachers in the UK is therefore extremely significant. Apart from the level of job satisfaction that motivates teachers to continue improving, the reward system also exerts a strong influence on teachers’ behaviour at work. In accordance with ‘New Pay’ approach, strategic incentives play an important role in achieving business objectives (Lawler, 1995). On one hand, overall payment levels compared to other occupations is a motivating factor, whilst on the other the internal payment system affects teachers’ performance as well. This report will offer a thorough analysis of the reward system for teachers in England and Wales, beginning with an overview of the general situation on teachers’ salaries and followed by a discussion on tangible aspects including base pay, variable pay, benefits and pensions as well as intangible aspects like non-financial benefits. By presenting all this information and analysing it clearly, I will offer some suggestions aimed at enhancing the total reward system for teachers in England and Wales.

Pay for performance is a quite rational theory. According to the U.S. Merit System Protection Board (2006), “Pay for Performance refers to a pay strategy where evaluations of individual and/or organizational performance have significant influence on the amount of pay increases or bonuses given to each employee” (p.1). This theory hope to use different salary to motivate and punish the employees according to the evaluation of their working performance. However, in the real world, it is very hard to implement in every organization, particularly in government and nonprofit organizations.

A merit pay program connects an increase in base salary to how successfully an employee performs his or her job.

Concerning this highly important subject of fair and equal compensation to motivate employees, a fair and equitable compensation system should be free of bias which can only serve to increase profits for a company verse a substandard compensation package which can only result in undeniable failure of such a company. By the same token, this can serve to attract employees that can truly make a difference for the company and it’s bottom-line. What is more, a fair system can serve to add to the perceived distributed justice of that company. “Theories of distributive justice seek to specify what is meant by a just distribution of goods among members of society” (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). Notably, if an employee witnesses lower level performer’s receiving higher compensation than their own. Than that employee is likely to grow resentment against the company and its compensation packages. Thus, this may cause a high performer to leave elsewhere where they will receive improved compensation. In particular, companies would want to avoid such resentment because it will lead to a less motivated workforce and talent pool. By the same token, if the employee is an especially high performer the chances of that employee leaving are even greater because he or she will value their pay to the amount of effort applied. Hence, if a company wants to retain and keep great performers then the company needs to attract employees that can make a difference through a fair

In order to understand whether merit issues are a good or bad method adapted by management to its employees, the meaning of merit pay should be understood. According to Dessler (2008) merit pay is an additional award on to an employee’s base salary for the employees’ performance and contribution towards the organisation goals and achievements.

Meritocratic is intended to increase the competitive drive of employees to increase productivity for the company. According to the article “Implementation plan for improvement of work life plan” (2016), if the cost of improving the employee’s life is higher than the productivity output of a happier employee, it may be considered to be too high for the company to endure” (p.5-6). This point validates the use of a meritocratic system because such a system ensures that no employee is being paid more than what the company is receiving in return because it’s all based upon the