Merit Pay Sources for your Essay

Merit Pay Teacher Performance Measured


One alternative that is being turned to more often is called differentiated staffing. This involves "changing the role of school personnel in such a way that the resulting organization is capable of adapting the program of a given school to meet the needs of the child" (Conte, 1972) (finally, someone remembers that schools are about students not teachers)

Merit Pay Teacher Performance Measured


"Incentive pay" denotes such programs which reward teachers for helping the school district achieve certain goals or solve specific problems. How a merit pay program should be designed Another expert in the field (Cramer, 1983) offers that there are three simple considerations that should guide the development of a merit pay program

Merit Pay Teacher Performance Measured


Ten years ago all stakeholders in the Denver Public Schools debated merit pay and the need for reform. In the end a new system of pay was instituted that "stopped paying based on years of service and started recognizing a host of skills and achievements on the job" (Drevitch, 2006)

Merit Pay Teacher Performance Measured


It has a long (and some would say failed) history and it has actually been around since the early twentieth century. According to one researcher (Guernsey, 1986) "during the 1920's merit pay plans gave way to the single salary system in an effort to end the salary discrepancies between elementary and secondary teachers

Merit Pay Teacher Performance Measured


Yet another example of an alternative to merit pay is the development of a scholarship program. "The money set aside for merit pay would be used to give scholarships to staff members and would not cost the school district additional money to implement the program" (Radtke, 1987)

Merit Pay for Performance Is


Understanding that all employees contribute to a sound academic environment, the Alaska School Performance Program seeks to reward all school employees when students improve test scores or maintain high marks on state exams in reading, writing and mathematics. Even though the program may be adjusted as the years go on, to ensure fairness in both urban and rural areas, recipients and their administrators are proud of their recognition for the hard work that they've put in (Cavanagh, 2007)

Merit Pay for Performance Is


This award amount would then be divided up by a committee made up of the school's principal, another administrator and two teachers. Houston, Texas: In September 2007, the Houston school board approved an overhaul of America's largest performance for pay system for teachers, following a study at Vanderbilt (Honawar, 2007b)

Merit Pay for Performance Is


This plan was based on an emerging movement being seen around the country to move away from the traditional salary structure for teachers, that was based solely on tenure and the number of academic degrees held by a teacher. Romney's plan meant that by improving classroom performance, teachers could add $5,000 or more to their annual salary (Janofsky, 2005)

Merit Pay for Performance Is


One of the most recent facets of educational reform is the introduction of the merit pay for teachers concept. Simply put, merit pay rewards talented teacher and encourages them to stay in the profession, while also encouraging ineffective teachers to improve their teaching abilities (Olson, 2007b)

Merit Pay for Performance Is


Providing the best educational opportunities for America's children, so that they're able to compete in an increasingly globalized and competitive world has become evermore important. Part of this challenge comes in the form of poorly compensated teachers whose traditional starting salary is quite low - a national average of $30,000 per year (Philips & Tyre, 2007)

Merit Pay for Performance Is


By delaying their planned implementation of a teacher's merit pay plan, by one year, the Florida legislature was able to cut their current budget by 1.4% (Sigo, 2007)

Merit Pay for Performance Is


Union Resistance Supporting Mediocrity: Sadly, as mentioned, there has been strong opposition to the merit pay plan for teachers, and much of this opposition has come from teachers' unions. Even erasing the subjective fear of merit pay, and replacing it with measurable, objective assessments, union opposition comes also because they fear that this type of system will weaken their collective bargaining power and doubt money can provide motivation needed (Viadero, 2007)

Merit Pay for Performance Is


Although the concept of merit pay may be revolutionary for the current teaching profession, it is not a new idea. The concept was first introduced in England, in 1710 (Wilms & Chapleau, 1999)

Merit Pay the Advantages of


Industries where performance is measured by standards capable of being manipulated or emphasized artificially are susceptible to unintended negative consequences if there are opportunities for employees to become overly focused on maximizing their pay raises Automatic Pay Systems Issues: Automatic pay raises provide psychological security for employees because their pay raises are awarded according to a predictable pattern or a specific pay increase schedule. One traditional argument for automatic pay raises is that since salary increases are guaranteed and unrelated to relative performance, employees can focus on satisfying their basic job requirements and without undue competition among coworkers (Daft 2005)

Merit Pay the Advantages of


Even worse, in several states, public school teachers have been caught falsifying student test results, both by revealing actual test questions to them during test preparation sessions; in some cases, teachers have actually been implicated for erasing incorrect responses and changing them to correct answers. As pointed out by critics of the merit pay raise system in public education, if educators are motivated to stoop to such levels merely to maintain the federal NCLB performance standards of their educational institutions, they simply cannot be trusted not to do the same where their own financial interests are very directly at stake (Dillon 2007)

Merit Pay the Advantages of


Conversely, where a secretary works at the headquarters office of a large industrialized corporate farming company, there is little connection, and therefore little direct psychological reward for performing well on the job. According to industrial psychologists, the reduction of direct association between vocational performance and compensation contributes to elements of complacency and as well as to the relative inability of workers to derive personal satisfaction from the feeling of a job well done (Gerrig & Zimbardo 2005)

Merit Pay the Advantages of


One traditional argument for automatic pay raises is that since salary increases are guaranteed and unrelated to relative performance, employees can focus on satisfying their basic job requirements and without undue competition among coworkers (Daft 2005). In some respects, automatic pay raises are more appropriate to post-industrial society because the specific vocational responsibilities of many workers are so far removed from the ultimate product of their collective output that it is difficult to quantify their contributions to overall production (Gray 1987)

Merit Pay the Advantages of


In some respects, automatic pay raises are more appropriate to post-industrial society because the specific vocational responsibilities of many workers are so far removed from the ultimate product of their collective output that it is difficult to quantify their contributions to overall production (Gray 1987). However, the other side of that argument is that the compartmentalization of the typical individual worker's responsibilities and the indirect nature of their relation to production already detracts from some of the main psychological incentives capable of motivating superior performance (Mills 1953)

Merit Pay the Advantages of


This is a legitimate risk that has been demonstrated by numerous reports of teachers changing the entire format of their classes for the sole purpose of achieving compliance with the federal requirements of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. According to some past experiences with merit pay raise systems for teachers, the change to merit pay resulted almost immediately in the reduction of variety in academic subject matter where teachers exercised their lesson planning authority and choice of subject matter exclusively to the subjects used to test students for the purpose of measuring teacher performance (Murray 2006)

Merit Pay the Advantages of


Merit Pay System Issues: The primary purpose of merit pay systems is to re-establish the connection between measurable work output and vocational motivation on the part of the employee. In theory, workers who are rewarded for effort, efficiency, and productivity will be motivated to work harder, longer, and more conscientiously than workers who are rewarded exactly the same for mediocre work as for superior work (Russell-Whalling 2008)