Endy 1

Christina Endy
Mrs. Abbadessa
English 105
10 March 2015
Merit Pay for Teachers
Ever since the beginning of time bribery and incentives have been used to influence
people to perform a certain action or act a certain way. Parents will reward their children for
completing their chores and waiters get tipped well if they are friendly and get the food out while
it's still warm. But should teachers' salaries be based on their classroom performance? It is
believed that increased pay will make teachers better teachers. If you had an opportunity to get a
higher salary, wouldn't you do whatever it took to do so? Teachers invest a lot of time, effort, and
money into their students. Teachers are required to buy their own supplies for bulletin boards and
only have a certain budget for classroom supplies. In order to be a successful teacher you need to
have a decent amount of classroom supplies. However, the majority of these supplies are paid for
out of pocket. An increase in teachers' salaries, based on their classroom performance, will allow
teachers to purchase more classroom supplies to help students learn. As a country, it is vital that
we do what it takes to provide future generations with a remarkable education.
Some teachers become teachers for the summers off and the five day work week which
thankfully ends before rush hour. Because of this many teachers do not actually want to be
teachers. They are just in it for the "easy" ride. Adding a financial incentive to the education field
will improve the education for students by attracting the best teacher candidates (Lavy). Most
teachers will only teach average if they are getting paid average. In order for some teachers to
give it their all they may need a little encouragement. Some may argue that there are other ways

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to improve teacher performance other than monetary bribes. Perhaps you could reward a teacher
with an extra prep period or additional paid sick and personal days. While that sounds good on
paper it would not work as well as people may hope. An extra prep period and additional paid
sick and personal days is a minor reward for putting in a remarkable amount of effort. It would
seem pointless in a teachers point of view.
Today, teachers are being paid based on their input rather than output; meaning they are
paid based on experience rather than performance (Lavy). If incentives are based on individual
student performance this would influence teachers to give more individualized attention to
students, therefore improving the students education. Individual student performance based
incentives will also force teachers to do the right thing, to make the best decision to benefit their
students. For example, some teachers will not assign homework because they do not feel like
grading it and going over the next day. Homework helps to improve student grades. Knowing
this, a teacher may more willingly give homework to student and also explain why the right
answers are the right answers. Some may argue that Basing teachers salaries based on their
students performances will cause teachers to only help the students they see potential in. For
example, a teacher would much rather take time out of his day to help the students who get As
or have the potential to get As, with the right help, rather than take the time to help the student
who is a C and D student. However, this is not the case. If teachers salaries are based on their
students performances, all student grades will be taken into account. A teacher who has a
classroom full of A and B students will ultimately have a better performance than that with
Mostly A students and a few C and D students.
Merit pay can also be based on group and or school-wide performance. Instead of basing
pay on individual student performance, a school can up the antic by increasing teachers salaries

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if test scores improve for the school overall. This will in turn increase teamwork among teachers.
Knowing that their pay will increase if they schools performance increases teachers will work
together to give students better education and are able to bounce ideas off one another without
feeling like they are giving away their game plan to the competition. In opposition to this some
will contradict that classes like remediation and special education will just diminish the scores.
As a solution to this problem, those classes will be scored separately. Because those students
have learning disabilities it is not fair to compare them to students who are able to grasp onto
concepts quickly and excel in the classroom. Another resolution for said problem would be to
score teachers on an increase in their students performances rather than using letter grades to do
so.
Currently, our country is at all time low in the education system. Job openings are
plentiful and eligible hirees are scarce. Over the past decade, teaching has been seen as an
unstable area of employment. Because of this many young college students choose to go into
growing fields such as healthcare and science technology. A teaching career has a poor reputation
and the only viable solution is merit based salaries. When planning for the future, high school
students who are about to enroll in college choose the major that they will both enjoy and get
them a well paying job straight out of college. By increasing teachers salaries based on
performance the profession would appear more modern and would attract more potential
teachers. American schools are at stake.The education system is deteriorating and as a country
we should be open to ideas and not be so quick to turn them down. Looking at the smaller scale,
merit pay will also benefit the state education system, not just the country's. Teachers salaries
can be determined on their students standardized test scores such as the PSSA and Keystones.
When schools perform well on standardized testing they receive positive recognition.

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Critics of merit pay will argue that scoring teachers performances and deciding each
individuals salary will take a great deal of time and effort. Prior to beginning a merit pay
program, a group of administrative personnel must create a plan. This plan must should include a
way to propose this new performance based salary to teachers, a guideline on how to judge
classroom performance and where to go with found judgements. Just creating the plan alone may
take months or even years. Once the plan is put in place, school administrators will have to take
the time to observe educators in their classrooms and analyze test scores. Agreeably, the time and
effort are a lot to ask just for a salary increase. However, merit pay is more than just a salary
increase.The substantial amount of time and effort are just a small price to pay for positive effect
merit pay will have on education.
Compared to other careers, teachers do not receive many benefits for how good they are
their job. For example, if you are a surgeon who performs risky surgeries successfully you will
be hired by top of the notch hospitals and will have a salary that sky rockets that of surgeon who
does the bare minimum to perform only mediocre surgeries. Although teachers do not save lives
like surgeons do, they are able to change and shape lives, which is just as important. Because of
this, merit pay will be beneficial. Through merit pay, the best teachers candidates will be
attracted to the career, student education will improve and teacher collaboration will boost.

Works Cited

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Lavy, Victor. "Using Performance-Based Pay to Improve the Quality of Teachers." The Future of
Children 17.1 (2007)ProQuest.Web. 9 Mar. 2015.