Evaluation for Merit Pay
As a future educator, I believe merit pay is a good idea. However, as a future special educator, I am concerned about the methods by which a teacher will be evaluated for merit pay. If teachers are to be evaluated through the same process by which we evaluate schools and teachers for the No Child Left Behind Act, through standardized testing, I am concerned for the special educators. Prior to attending school at WIU, I worked with special education students as a program assistant in a junior high school. I assisted with the administration of the standardized tests. It was quite painful to see these students, most of who functioned academically at a primary level, struggle with these tests. As administrators of the exam, we read the exams to the students and they in turn selected what they felt was the right answer and filled in the corresponding bubble. Most of the content of the exam was much above the academic capability of these students. What resulted were simply guesses and not an actual indicator of the students’ knowledge of the content.
I believe merit pay is a great way to reward inspirational, hard-working, quality teachers. It is an ideal way to ensure teachers are participating in continuing education and working to be the most up-to-date, qualified teachers. However, I feel the system by which teachers are evaluated should somehow be based upon criteria that meet the needs of each individual teacher based on the students he or she is teaching. There cannot be a standardized evaluation process to evaluate all teachers the same for merit pay. It simply is not fair. The evaluator needs to examine the classroom setting and the specific needs of the students in order to see that the teacher is in deed working to best meet the needs of the children in the classroom. Perhaps the school administrators could look at the students’ IEPs to see that students are meeting the goals and objectives of their IEP as an indicator of the special educators’ success. Basing a teacher’s success off of a standardized test and not looking at each individual classroom and the individual abilities of those students seems unfair to teachers who are working with underprivileged or lower achieving students. I believe special educators are working just as hard, if not harder, to be the best teacher possible and to help their students succeed. I am in favor of merit pay, but let’s work towards finding a way to make it work for all educators.
This post was submitted by Lissa Shafer.
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