I’ll Tell You Where to Stick Teacher Merit Pay

Posted by Marsha on March 24, 2010

This whole idea about merit pay is making me sick.   Believe me, there is not a teacher out there that wouldn’t like to make more money, but why do “they” think that money is the best way to motivate teachers to do a better job?

None of us went into teaching for the money, but do you think we went through college and accepted teaching jobs with the idea that we didn’t want to do the best?     We all entered our first classroom with high hopes and awesome intentions.  So what happens?  Why do some of us turn out to be great teachers, others average, and others failures?  Do teaching colleges really prepare us for the real life trenches? Are some teachers simply naturals?  Does the luck the kind of school and its administration play into the equation?

Here is what I am thinking… if they want to raise student achievement, motivate teachers, and separate the good from the bad and ugly, forget about merit pay.  Take that money and invest it in training.  Not status quo professional development.  Create teams whose job is not to observe for evaluative purposes, but rather to observe for the purpose of providing support, mentoring, and training.  But here is the thing, don’t come into my classroom for a day or two with a clip board and check list.  Come in and stay a while.  Walk in my shoes so you can get to know ME and THEN help me be the best I can be.  Build a relationship with me and then give me training that pertains to my reality.  Get me to the point where I can trust you and not fear for my job because if you do that, my students’ test scores will be higher than if you force me to teach to the instruement that will be the deciding factor in my income and employment.

Here is the other side.  We have to change the culture of the schools and the culture of our profession.  We have to be open minded and willing to accept mentoring, no matter how tenured we may be.   Becoming a better teacher doesn’t imply I am not doing a good job.  It simply means acknowledging that I can benefit from reflection and change.   I always want to get better at what I do… the minute I stop learning is the minute I start sliding.

We don’t have time to wait for teaching colleges to put out better teachers and for this new bread to infiltrate our schools.  We don’t have time for incentives to motivate teachers (because it will not work and will only encourage teaching to the instruments that are used to base the incentives).  We don’t have time to develop a way to evaluate teachers to get rid of the dead wood.  We have to find a way to identify WHAT combination of things make a good teacher, and help the thousands we already have by giving them the support and training they need in order to reflect upon and capitalize on what their teaching experience to date has taught them (good or bad), make adjustments, and improve their performance.

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