Teacher Merit Pay Case Study

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.

     High school teachers’ average salary varies across the world. The United States is said to be one of the richest countries in the world, yet our teachers are being paid one of the lowest amounts. The Education Intelligence Agency, author of the article “Ohio Teacher Overcomes Union’s Tolerance” published an International Teacher Salary Report ranking the fifty states by “how much the average salary exceeded per capita personal income.” According to the Education Intelligence Agency Ohio’s percentage rate is only fifty- five point one percent. According to the Education Intelligence Agency the lowest state percentage is in South Dakota at twenty- three point six percent and the highest state percentage is

Merit pay is a short-term, pay-for-performance plan, with a typical life span of three to four years, in which employers provide rewards, usually in terms of a raise for past performance, for employees who perform their jobs effectively, which will lead to higher performing employees which will in turn lead to a better work environment and higher overall productivity. The concept of merit pay is most often mentioned in the context of educational and/or government civil service reform. With a merit-based pay system, the employer pays, with the idea that the employer will reward more productive employees with merit increases. This concept came about in an attempt to sustain high performance levels in the workplace linking merit increases, or increases in base pay, to employee performance ratings, which are taken at the end of a performance year, usually by a direct supervisor. Due to the ever increasing changes of supply and demand in business, in order to remain feasible, the merit pay system is expected to change consistently with the needs presented to the companies, whether it be foreign competition, consumer demands, producer limitations, etc.

“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

The general argument made by Arianna Prothero in her work, “Does Paying Kids to Do Well Actually Work,” is that incentives may help boost students to come to school and learn so they may earn a further education. More specifically, Arianna believes that financial incentives have a huge impact on students rather than little rewards. She writes “Incentives are also more likely to work for students who need a little improvement to earn a passing grade.” Schools that use incentives have a better chance of teaching more kids as well as more of them learning what they really need to at school; new material.

The problem with Karmanos’ idea is that there’s no provision for merit pay in Michigan, lousy teachers and great teachers make the same as long as they have equal seniority and education. That’s a recipe for mediocrity in any industry. Teacher quality won’t significantly improve until pay is linked directly to performance.

(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.

Low comparative compensation In 1960, Senator John Kennedy remarked that we are a nation that pays its sanitation workers more than its teachers. He realized that without adequate compensation the country could not hope to provide enough well-trained teachers. "We are not attracting bring young men and women into teaching because the salaries which we pay our teachers are shamefully low" (Kennedy). Over 50 years later this situation has not substantially improved. It is not

I agree with your statement regarding both the merit-based Incentive Payment System and Alternative Payments Models within MACRA. For example, patient care organizations must use efficient and accurate clinical documentation, which has always been an important factor when shifting the healthcare landscape. Clinical documentation is critical to patient care when health care organizations (HCOs) have the ability to control their costs. At the same time, if the HCO is unable to contain the costs and optimize claims, then clinical documentation improvements must be taken seriously because it impacts all the patients and physicians apart of the MACRA. Offering efficient coding and documentation standards, healthcare organizations will have the correct

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?”

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

Teachers have and will always have a big impact in everyone’s life and if not everyone, well, at least they did for me. They teach you everything you need to know about a subject and valuable life lessons, so why are they not paid sufficiently enough to make a decent living? Teachers salaries have always been low and I believe it is the time that changes. Being a lawyer, doctor, or engineer is great, but none of that would be possible without the insight of a teacher, I will inform you in this paper on why I believe there is a need for action. I will go over the background of teacher’s salaries, my ideas on what would be best for teachers not just in Texas, but nationwide, and pros and cons on the issues and ideas at hand.

In school, the quality of the teacher is highly important and is a major factor when it comes to a student’s success. Teachers do not get paid like they are leading and preparing the future generations of the world. The cost of college to be a qualified teacher mimics the numbers of many higher-paid jobs. As stated in Jen Huckwaldt’s article, “For the Love of the Job: Does Society Pay Teachers What They Are Worth?”, she says “[There are] other jobs that pay more with a master's degree, like a database administrator (median salary for all education levels: $69,626) or a software engineer (median salary for all education levels: $77,982).” (Huckwaldt, Par. 7) This is a hefty investment for a relatively low pay with an average base salary of

The question I would like to research is the feasibility of merit-based compensation in the public sector: opportunities and limitations. I would like to explore merit-based compensation systems in public organizations, their effect on performance and motivation of employees, and analyze the factors that may provide limitations to the performance-based compensation in the public sector.