Getting rid of merit pay
There are many things that need to be fixed within our schooling systems. There are many issues and areas that need to be addressed, but one issue I that I think needs to be addressed is merit pay. I believe that merit pay is a bad way to judge a teacher and a bad way to award a teacher. Merit pay should be taken out of all school systems for many reasons.
One reason is because there is not a reliable way to measure a teacher’s classroom performance. For this sole reason, many teacher unions oppose this idea. You have to think about the teachers that are already doing a good job and are at the top of their performance. Merit pay can reward bad teachers for making little improvements. Teachers would be teaching for the wrong reasons. They would be teaching just to get a little extra cash and we need teachers in our school systems that are willing to teach to help kids succeed in life.
Another reason that we should get rid of merit pay is because it may create competition between teachers. Merit pay as been found to hurt teacher collaboration, because of this it will create a weak school culture within the school. We do not need our teachers trying to compete against each other. Teaching students is not a game and the teachers need to work together to better their teaching, not compete against each other.
If we have merit pay within our schools, teachers will start teaching to the test and fail to teach other material. This is not fair to the students and they deserve the chance to learn different types of material not just test material. Because of teachers teaching to the test, they do not focus on long term goals. They strictly focus on short term goals.
Merit pay increases tension and stress for a teacher and that is something they do not need. Other teachers think that merit pay is a way to threaten a teacher. They might think that if their students do not perform well, they may loose their job. Because they feel threatened, it reduces their freedom of action and the teacher may experience anger and dissatisfaction.
As you can see merit pay should be taken out of all school systems. It is not a reliable way to measure a teacher’s performance, it may create competition between teachers, and teachers will teach to the test. If we focused more on trying to hire good teachers and not trying to think of ways to make bad teachers good, our school systems would become a better place for students to learn.
Devin Whitehead
This post was submitted by Devin Whitehead.
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