Merit Pay
I am a senior at Western Illinois University and Special Education major. We have discussed merit pay during class and I do not think it is a good idea. Coming from a special education perspective you can see why I would disagree with implementing this alternative. My job as a special education teacher is to help my students become more independent and help them learn the basic skills they will use throughout their lives. Depending on the student’s disability many children could not meet the state testing standards. There would need to be some sort of alternative for teachers of special education students. Also, if teachers’ pay is determined by meeting state testing standards teachers are going to teach the test and not enhance learning activities to teach children how to be creative as well as more involved critical thinking skills. The strategies we learn in college will not matter once we get into the classroom because we would only be worried about the skills on the test. Students will not be motivated to learn because teachers will not be able to take risks and let the students experiment with their learning. There is also a chance that people will not want to work in a low income area because those students might not have the resources to achieve on the state tests. The inner city areas will still be at loss for teachers because people will think they cannot achieve to the standards. Merit pay is not the best decision because teachers are going to dismiss special education students from their classroom. They will be looked down upon and even more neglected than they already have been. Teachers should want to teach because they love teaching. Many people do not go into this field because of our overwhelming salary so why make it a point now? People who want to be a teacher will still want to be a teacher even without their salary being decided by a state test.
This post was submitted by Jaclyn Aspinall.
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