Teacher Pay Performance
Is it justifiable to tie public school teachers' pay to student test scores? What are the pros/cons?
On the surface, it seems so simple -- better teachers should be paid more than teachers of poor quality. After all, that is the rationale behind bonuses at a company in private enterprise. A salesperson who has a higher rate of sales receives a higher commission and salary than an individual with a poor sales record. The argument to linking teacher pay to student performance is similar to the rationale used in business -- linking pay to performance gives teachers an incentive to go the extra mile to make sure students will learn the material. They will stay after school later to tutor struggling pupils and follow up in class if students do not understand the material.
However, there is one problem with this analogy -- school is not a factory, and teachers are not dealing with a product over which they have sole control. Teachers deal with students for one brief year, and must grapple with the consequences of the student's previous education, home life, and learning disabilities. Sometimes, an apparently poor performance on a standardized proficiency exam may be a remarkable performance for an individual student, although not when compared to the rest of the district's more privileged or capable children,
Linking pay to student performance provides a profound disincentive for teachers not to take the risk of teaching in historically disenfranchised and underperforming school districts. Why work twice as hard to deal with students who are more difficult to educate, for less pay? Finally, linking pay to performance assumes the validity of the test used to measure student performance. Teachers who teach 'to the test' may receive a bonus, while teachers who spend time devising creative assignments, or who cover material in a way that deals with all of the student's multiple intelligences, rather than just the verbal and mathematical capabilities tested on standardized proficiency tests, may not be rewarded adequately.
