Time for Performance-Based Pay?
March 11, 2009
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 introduced sweeping reform into the education system of the United States, bringing new scrutiny to the effectiveness of teachers and accountability into the classroom via standardized testing. Many states and school districts have used student performance data culled from the NCLB-inspired testing as a measuring stick to instigate reform of the traditional salary system for teachers"implementing performance pay, merit pay or knowledge/skill based pay.
The most commonly known performance-based pay method ties teacher salary increases to their students' standardized test scores. Will this simply lead to an outbreak of teaching to the test and a vanishing of independent thinking and problem solving? If performance-based pay is implemented, teachers may be inclined to construct teaching methods that train students only to achieve correct answers on standardized tests rather than spend their time in the classroom educating the students on a diverse and intellectually-challenging curriculum. Additionally, it is difficult to determine how much teachers contribute to students' scores on standardized tests, as there are many factors involved in student achievement. Another performance-based pay option is that of evaluating the teacher's performance through direct observation in the classroom, yet administrators and teachers question the objectivity of that method.
The National Education Association (NEA) believes there are ways to create performance-based pay systems that measure teacher performance and encourage teachers to do more than simply coach students on standardized tests. Furthermore, Michael J. Podgursky, of the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Matthew G. Springer, of Vanderbilt's Peabody College, report, in their 2007 study, "Teacher Performance Pay: A Review," that teachers prove to be more effective and student productivity increases when teachers are provided with incentives.
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COMMENTS
Would you be willing to accept performance based pay in lieu of your current package, and if so, what would you want the assessment criteria to be?
Leave your response in the comments below.
