Running head: MERIT PAY OR MORE PAY?

Merit Pay or More Pay? Kendra Baker The College of Southern Idaho

Authors Notes This paper was prepared for English 102, Section C18, taught by Kory Lloyd.

MERIT PAY OR MORE PAY? Merit Pay or More Pay? When I think about systems in the United States that need help, I can think of many. From the correctional facilities to the health care system there are many issues that need some

attention. One of the most important systems that need some change is the education system. The children that attend our public schools are our future and we need to be giving them the best education possible and that means making sure we have the best teachers teaching them. I believe education is one of the most valuable things anyone can get and if we arent giving students the best education we are failing big time. There are some really great teachers in the public school system and some not so great teachers. We need to come together to find a way to weed out the bad teachers without punishing the great teachers. Teaching is one of those very stressful and thankless jobs. Most people dont realize just how hard teachers work or how much they get paid for all the hard work they do. In some countries teachers get paid as much as an engineer and in others, like the United States, some teachers are considered lower class and do not make much money at all. Most teachers have to find second jobs just to take care of their families and make ends meet. This is crazy all by itself since teachers have to have a four year bachelors degree in order to teach and they are responsible for getting children, which sometimes could care less, to learn. To add the stress of having their pay determined by whether or not their students get good grades on standardized tests seems even crazier to me. In the last few years there has been a lot of talk about education reform. Most people can agree there needs to be some kind of education reform, but most wont agree on what needs to be changed. The education reform subjects range from what is being taught, and what needs to be taught in schools to what is being used to teach it, all the way to teachers salaries. Teachers

MERIT PAY OR MORE PAY?

salaries can be a very touchy subject for everyone, especially for the teachers. Many people think we should change the way teachers are getting paid to making their pay be based on the performance of their students and their standardized test scores. Many think this would help to weed out the teachers that arent doing their job. I am not convinced that this would be a good solution to the problems. It might even cause more problems. Teachers base pay should be raised overall and that would attract more qualified individuals. We owe it to our children to get them the best teachers possible. Teachers should not get paid based on their performance. Currently 95 percent of teachers in the public school systems are paid on the single salary system. This means they are paid by how much experience they have or the length of time they have been teaching and based on how many degrees they have earned. Studies have shown that the more degrees and more experience a teacher has, does not make them any better or worse at teaching. Research shows that after a few years the benefits of teaching experience begins to level off. This happens in a lot of different jobs, but in the teaching profession there is no room for leveling off. After reading this research it is certain that something needs to be done with the way our education system runs and how our teachers are paid, but is pay by performance really the best answer (Barnett & Ritter, 2008)? Legislatures and policymakers believe that introducing merit pay would improve schools in three ways. The first is that financial rewards would motivate teachers and they would put more effort into teaching their students. The second improvement would be, that merit pay would attract more valuable teachers and people that would thrive in a pay by performance career. The third reason for implementing merit pay is that good teachers would consistently earn large bonuses and bad teachers would not so after a while the bad teachers would be weeded out. All

MERIT PAY OR MORE PAY? of this sounds great, but there would also be many negative effects of merit pay (Barnett & Ritter, 2008). Some things that should be taken into consideration when deciding whether teachers should be paid by their performance are whether or not the pay system is going to be able to be funded, is the system easily understood, are evaluations subjective or objective, have administrative fees been calculated, and are the incentives big enough to actually make a difference? The pay plans must also be negotiated with the teachers to make sure it would be appealing to them. Most teachers are not in favor of pay by performance plans so the last step may be hard to do (Barnett & Ritter, 2008). There is a reason that merit pay or pay by performance hasnt been effective in other countries and it should not be put in place in the United States. There are too many loop holes in the system. In the article Merit pay for teachers is only fair, the author wrote about how legislators

and government officials have been trying to pass laws so that teachers get merit pay. The tug of war has been going on since the 1980s. One of the biggest reasons to put merit pay into place would be to motivate teachers to be the best they can be and to weed out the bad teachers and reward the good teachers. Teachers would get some sort of raise or bonus based on their students test scores at the end of the school year and their ability to teach based on classroom evaluations. Another reason for merit pay is that people say it is fairer. Peter Kent, vice-president of the Association of School and College Leaders, said in an interview, When I was a teacher I used to get frustrated when I felt somebody had moved up the pay scale and didnt deserve it. He also said, School leaders want a system where people who are performing well are rewarded appropriately (Morrison, 2013).

MERIT PAY OR MORE PAY? Teachers should be rewarded for a job well done. It is unfair to reward them based on students test scores because that is beyond their control. In some ways being paid based on performance can be a great thing, but it can also be a really bad thing. It would put too much pressure on teachers and cause a lot of really good teachers to quit teaching all together. I spend a few hours a week helping in a third grade elementary class. I usually spend my time helping some of the students that are struggling with reading and writing. There is one student that has ADD. Some days I spend time with him one on one trying to get him to focus and to read and

write. It can be very frustrating and the teacher has 20 other kids that she has to make sure are on task. It would be impossible for her to get him to focus all day, every day by herself and the other students may suffer if she has to put too much effort into getting one child on task. The education system needs some kind of reform, but pay based on performance is not the key to a better education system. In the article If you pay peanuts do you get monkeys, the author wrote how teachers are the most important part of a school. We need to find a way to get great teachers in the school system. Raising the average base salary would attract more talented teachers. One of the biggest reasons people decide not to teach is because the base salary is too small. Some people feel it is not worth it to teach based on the amount of stress the job entails and the little amount of money that comes with it. Teachers in other countries such as Switzerland, Korea, and Germany are paid in the 78th percentile of their wage distribution. In the United States, teachers are in the 49th percentile (Dolton & Marcenaro-Gutierrez, 2011). This means other countries are attracting better teachers and their students achievement levels prove this. Medical doctors and lawyers get paid great salaries, and those fields attract the most able and talented people. Studies indicate that in order to attract the best teachers, salaries for teachers need to be higher. Class sizes also

MERIT PAY OR MORE PAY? make a big difference in test scores. In an experiment having smaller class sizes was just as effective as merit pay and would give the teacher a better opportunity to give each child one on one time, which is very important and helps students learn much better (Dolton & MarcenaroGutierrez, 2011).

I am studying to become an elementary teacher and the one thing that bothers me most is the amount of money I will make, but the reason I have decided to go forward with it is because it will be a rewarding job in other ways than money. Teaching is what I have always wanted to do with my life, but it would be nice if the salary was a little bigger. Most teachers become teachers because they want to make a difference in a childs life, not because they will get rich doing it. Instead of paying teachers by their performance, taking away tenure would be a better solution. Taking away tenure could help to weed out the good and bad teachers because a lot of people wouldnt become a teacher just because of tenure. It was originally placed in schools to protect the teachers but it has turned into a huge perk for working in education. Tenure makes it so teachers have a job and cant be fired unless the school runs out of money and closes. The rules are different in every school. Some schools it takes a long time to get tenure and other schools it doesnt take much time at all. There are some good things and some bad things that happen when a teacher gets tenure. It is great for those teachers that really care and are trying really hard to be the best they can be while utilizing the small amount of resources they have. One of the bad things about tenure is there is nothing in place to insure that they stay productive. Some teachers become relaxed and lazy knowing they cant be fired. Tenure should be taken away from teachers to help weed out the teachers that arent in the teaching field for good reasons (Rotherham 2011).

MERIT PAY OR MORE PAY? In the article Teacher pay for performance: experimental evidence from the project on incentives in teaching, the author writes about a study in the Metropolitan Nashville Public School District with 24,000 students and 300 teachers that volunteered to be a part of an experiment where teachers would get paid based on the students performance. The experiment lasted two school years and involved fifth through eighth grades. It was kept confidential which teachers were being paid for performance and which teachers were getting a base pay. They found that the students with teachers being paid for performance didnt do any better or worse than the students with teachers not being paid by performance (Teacher Pay, 2011). According to the article Teachers perceptions of merit pay, England was the first place to start merit pay in 1710. It became a very negative situation. The teachers became very competitive and anxious knowing that their pay was based on their students achievements. In 1883 England put an end to merit pay because it was unhealthy and teachers werent being paid fairly. Another reason they stopped it was because the public refused to accept the idea of merit pay. Several teachers were interviewed that received bonuses based on their students performance and most of them agreed that merit pay was not a good thing (Langheinrich 2012). Most teachers, about 60 percent, do not agree that merit pay is a good thing. The biggest reasons teachers gave for not wanting to be paid based on performance were that it is hard to evaluate the teachers performance, teachers might cheat and change grades, and political issues could increase in the school systems. Usually when merit pay gets brought to legislatures it gets thrown out due to inconsistencies in the teacher evaluation process and there just isnt enough funds to give extra money to the teachers with the best performance (Langheinrich 2012). Gary Clabaugh (2009) wrote about an experience he had while teaching the seventh grade in the article Teacher merit pay: is it a good idea? He wrote that the audio visual

MERIT PAY OR MORE PAY? equipment was kept in the principals favorite teachers classroom. This meant that teacher had first claim on the equipment and a lot of the time other teachers wouldnt get to use the equipment. There was another situation where one of the teachers was good friends with the secretary so she got to pick the students that she wanted in her class every year. If pay based on performance was in this school the teachers would unfairly get bigger pay checks because they have an advantage of being friends with the right people or just being a favorite. Just because a

teacher has friends or is a favorite does not mean that teacher is a good teacher (Clabaugh, 2009, pp. 16-20). Most people have a preconceived idea that teachers are truthful and respectable with great morals. That is not always the case. Teachers are people just like everyone else and there are temptations that teachers may fall victims of. Yes, teachers are not supposed to cheat and do bad things, but it happens all the time. If merit pay exists, some teachers might cheat and change test scores or solely teach to the test so they can get better paychecks. This would hurt the students in the end if they are only learning exactly what is on the test. These days teaching to the test is already an issue but adding merit pay would add to the issue. Teachers and principals arent supposed to have favorites but it happens just like in any other job. So some teachers may have an advantage over other teachers which would make merit pay very unfair (Clabaugh 2009 pp. 16-20). Some research shows that merit pay does work to increase job performance, but only when job performance can be measured clearly. Teaching is one of those jobs that performance is a hard thing to measure: Suppose, for example, a youngster comes to class with a poor self-concept. But due to the patience, skill, and caring of her teacher, she leaves with a new sense of self-

MERIT PAY OR MORE PAY? worth. Surely such a result is meritorious even if the childs test scores remain

unchanged. But can such merit be well enough measured to be rewarded? How is anyone supposed to know whether or not a teacher has made a difference in a students life? (Clabaugh, 2009, p. 17). Making a difference in a students life is one of the biggest jobs a teacher has. In order to be a good teacher, the teacher must care about the child and try to be a positive influence in the childs life. There are different levels of students, some students are extremely smart and dont need much motivation. Other students have learning disabilities and need a lot of one on one time. Some schools dont have the resources or funds to teach proficiently. Teachers jobs are huge and there isnt an outline that shows a person exactly how to be a teacher. Teachers have to have a four year degree, but only so much can be taught while going to college. College does not set a teacher up to know every hurdle they may face. A lot of teachers have to pull money from their own personal pockets to purchase items to help teach their students. If merit pay is based on standardized test scores, only teachers that teach to the test will be rewarded and even then its not guaranteed that every student will take in all the information the teacher teaches. Some teachers with student that have learning disabilities will be punished by not receiving the rewards. Merit pay or pay by performance for teachers is not a good idea for many reasons. It would end up being unfair for most teachers and could end up punishing some really great teachers. If pay by performance is mandated it could push some of our really amazing teachers out of the teaching field all together. It is crucial to keep the few good teachers that we have. There are other things that could be implemented that would help to weed out the bad teachers

MERIT PAY OR MORE PAY? from the good teachers. Raising teachers base pay all around would help to attract more able individuals that would be great teachers.

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MERIT PAY OR MORE PAY? References Barnett, J. H., & Ritter, G. W. (2008, October). When merit pay is worth pursuing. In Educational Leadership. Retrieved December 9, 2013, from http://www.ascd.org/ publications/educational-leadership/oct08/vol66/num02/When-Merit-Pay-Is-WorthPursuing.aspx

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Clabaugh, G. K. (2009). Teacher Merit Pay: Is It a Good Idea?. Educational Horizons, 88(1), 1620. Dolton, P., & Marcenaro-Gutierrez, O. D. (2011). If you pay peanuts do you get monkeys? A cross-country analysis of teacher pay and pupil performance. Economic Policy, 26(65), 555. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0327.2010.00257.x Jackson, V., Langheinrich, C., & Loth, D. (2012, January 1). Teachers' Perceptions of Merit Pay. Online Submission, Morrison, N. (2013, November 26). Merit pay for teachers is only fair. In Forbes. Retrieved December 2, 2013, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2013/11/26/merit-payfor-teachers-is-only-fair/ Rotherham, A. J. (2011, June 30). Should tenure be abolished?. In Time U.S.. Retrieved December 9, 2011, from http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2080601,00. html What Works Clearinghouse, (. (2011). WWC Quick Review of the Report "Teacher Pay for Performance: Experimental Evidence from the Project on Incentives in Teaching". What Works Clearinghouse.