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Spotlight back on heated argument
Performance pay for teachers is back on track in Utah for the 2009-10 school year, according to Salt Lake City TV Station WKSL. Lawmakers approved a yearly sum of $300,000 to be divvied amongst the five schools chosen as part of the state’s two-year pilot program.
To participate in the program, the schools must develop plans to measure teacher success and reward them with extra pay. The pay will be based on instruction quality, student academic progress, as well as parent, student or community satisfaction. All five schools selected were elementary schools – and two of the six are charter schools.
A complicated topic
The idea of performance based pay is not a new one, and has seen its fair share of vociferous arguments both for and against. Education World does a great job of spelling out the issue and its history in an article titled “Pay for Performance–What are the Issues?To article outlines the two arguments:
Supporters
Advocates argue that in other industries, people are rewarded with raises and salaries for a job well done, and fired when the opposite occurs. Why not so in education? Advocates also argue that merit pay programs attract more people to the teaching profession and make them work harder.
Parents for Choice in Education(PCE) put its support behind this bill, and states on its site that it supports policies that reward and recognize teachers for excellence and individual student gains. Such polices put teachers in control of their own compensation.”
Opponents
The traditional U.S. teachers' pay system dates back to 1921, when it was introduced in an effort to equalize pay in an era when females and minorities earned less than male white counterparts in the teaching profession. Reverting to another system may lead to discrimination. They also argue that merit pay cannot be compared to business compensation and does not work as it is based on what are at best “fuzzy” standards.
In response to the Utah pilot program, the Utah Education Associationsupports differentiated pay in some form. It did not agree with much of the process or criteria surrounding this particular pilot. Association President Kim Campbell issued the following statement opposing this particular pilot. “With its perennial status as dead last in per-pupil funding, Utah can ill afford to fund one public education experiment after another. Other states have seen success with teacher performance programs that meet the above criteria. We should look to these successful plans rather than attempting to continually recreate the wheel.”
Read more education debates in the news, including one about a new study claiming that bedtime conversation is more effective than bedtime stories for children.
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