Teaching is an honorable profession
with teachers seeking to pass on their knowledge to students to help them get
ahead in life. So wouldn’t you love to
give a great teacher more money?
Wouldn’t you love to give the minority bad teachers incentives to
improve by giving them less money for their failures? Well we can if we pay a teacher based on
performance. That’s right, a teachers
pay can be based on how well they teach students. In other words, the more successful a student
is in the classroom, the higher the teachers pay.
Why pay per performance?: Simple, good teachers need incentives to keep
teaching. Some teach purely on the fact
that they love teaching, but if they don’t get enough to live on or they are
paid the same as a horrible teacher then why teach there. They loose any reason to teach at a public
school and can go to a charter or a private school where their skills are more
highly valued. Not to mention, if public
schools paid based on performance (also known as merit pay) they would be more
competitive in acquiring top quality teachers against their private and charter
compatriots. The minority bad teachers on
the other hand have incentive to try harder whether they have tenure or not
because they will be getting less money and they want the maximum their pay
check can offer.
So how can we measure
performance?: It can be measured through
teacher evaluation, very detailed teacher evaluations with strict guidelines so
as to prevent the teacher from manipulating student performance to make them
look better than they really are. This
manipulation of student grades to alter performance records will be the primary
source of corruption within this system.
However, with careful oversight, and I mean real oversight, fraud can be
prevented.
Incentives: So with the best teachers being paid
the maximum and the worst being paid the minimum schools will get better due to
teachers being paid exactly what they deserve.
Bad teachers will either get batter or be forced out due to lower
pay. The best teachers will be rewarded
and will innovate to try and keep performance high. There are obstacles however. One obstacle is union contracts. While unions unto themselves are good, when
they protect workers they can sometimes hurt like in the case of teachers. Teachers are forbidden from working longer
hours in some cases because they may be paid based on the number of hours they
work. The contract tries to keep every
ones pay equal and or prevent overwork.
However, it limits the time a teacher can spend with a student out of
school. Therefore the contract is in this
case too limiting. The other obstacle is
the opinion that those who work for the government should not be paid based on
performance because they are considered public servants or that they should
have equal pay to prevent corruption.
Conclusion: Quite frankly I do not consider
public school teachers a part of government.
Teachers are individuals with a specialty who are hired by the
government to perform a service.
Essentially they are private contractors being paid to teach people who
cannot afford a private and expensive education. They are not public servants, but public
heroes aiding their students to carve a path for their own future. Therefore, a great teacher should be paid
more because that teacher is successful in educating their students.
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