Merit Pay Confusion
Yesterday the Boston Globe published a piece by Vivian Troen and Katherine C. Boles that pretty much stomped on merit pay with a high-heeled shoe. They called it a "misguided plan to waste money and further strain an already exhausted system."
Fair enough. But the authors' names seemed familiar to me, and I went through the EIA archives and found this item from February 7, 2000:
Recommended reading: “America’s New Teachers: How Good, and for How Long?” by Katherine C. Boles and Vivian Troen in the February 2 issue of Education Week. An excerpt: “In the rigid school culture, star performance is discouraged by the egalitarian notion that each teacher is the ‘equal’ of every other teacher. This is a system which rewards only seniority and not merit, or knowledge, or expertise, or contributions to the profession. If all teachers are equal, then none is outstanding, and there are no failures.”
Well, we're all entitled to change our minds, or maybe Troen and Boles have a plan to reward teachers on merit without calling it merit pay. In any event, the Arizona Republic published a serendipitous article today on performance pay that sums up the various experiments across the country.
Fair enough. But the authors' names seemed familiar to me, and I went through the EIA archives and found this item from February 7, 2000:
Recommended reading: “America’s New Teachers: How Good, and for How Long?” by Katherine C. Boles and Vivian Troen in the February 2 issue of Education Week. An excerpt: “In the rigid school culture, star performance is discouraged by the egalitarian notion that each teacher is the ‘equal’ of every other teacher. This is a system which rewards only seniority and not merit, or knowledge, or expertise, or contributions to the profession. If all teachers are equal, then none is outstanding, and there are no failures.”
Well, we're all entitled to change our minds, or maybe Troen and Boles have a plan to reward teachers on merit without calling it merit pay. In any event, the Arizona Republic published a serendipitous article today on performance pay that sums up the various experiments across the country.
We need to be focusing not on rewarding or punishing teachers with pay, but making teachers better teachers. The amount of time that teachers get for professional development is a joke. Even worse is the fact that teachers have to pay for continued education. I admit, some teachers are horrible, but throwing money in their face isn't going to make them better. We need also focus on getting teachers out of the profession if they don't want to be there.
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September 29, 2005 8:09 AM
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