Good Day mysterylady89
Let's really examine the question. Should teacher pay be based on merit? If so, how should merit be determined?
First of all I assume we're talking about public school teachers. Public school teachers are government employees -- state government employees. They are public sector workers. I think its important to say that at the outset.
"Merit." Where does this word and its underlying concept, as applied to public education, come from? The "merit" idea comes from the private for-profit sector, the world of business. This may not be the place to say this but the whole neoliberal movement that arose, in America, in the 1970s, had many economic and social/cultural consequences.
These social and cultural consequences manifested themselves most strikingly in the eighties, the era of Ronald Reagan, the "Me generation." It was Reagan who famously said "Government is not the answer to our problems. Government is the problem." This was the decade when we witnessed government turn on itself (by its own leaders) most violently and the public was encouraged most effectively to blame government for all our ills -- completely ignoring the central role of private concentrated economic power, in my opinion.
Now, public school teachers are part of government. Those of you who are old enough will remember the following: there was a saying in the eighties "Those who can't teach." Remember that? What did this mean?
This meant that those who couldn't "hack it" in the glorious "business world," resorted to teaching. Teaching began to be seen as the refuge of the incompetent. I would submit that a lot of discussion comes from this idea that teaching was not thought to be a "real job."
Now, this neoliberal movement also had the cultural effect of holding up the allegedly logical, efficient, streamlined business sector as the model which every sector of society, including government should strive to emulate. It was thought that government should emulate business, with its alleged concern for balanced budgets and so forth.
Business was alleged to be based on a performance or "merit" model. Every time there was a fiscal/economic crisis the conservative think tanks were always saying the cause was: too much government intervention in the private sector, too much spending on social provision or what they call "entitlements," too high a tax burden on business, etc, etc.
Here is my point. The public sector and the private sector are not the same (if you happen to think they are or should be treated the same, that's one thing); but in my opinion they are not the same. The public sector and private sector have different aims and objectives (or they really should!). They have different purposes, and so on. Therefore they should not be evaluated in the same way.
I don't think public school teachers should be evaluated on similar "bottom line" yardsticks as corporate officers. We might mention, in passing, that this recent crisis we are passing through - like all financial meltdowns and resulting economic recessions - shows once again that the corporate world, as a whole, are not worthy of emulation even by their own nominal, professed standards. Therefore they should not be emulated and we might begin by taking the discussion of education out of that "bottom line" paradigm. Also, what we have come to learn or be reminded of is that when we are made aware, in a vague, general way, of the "bottom line" data of the business world, these are often manipulated -- making the act of trying to ascertain the true health of a company problematic.
I don't think corporate "merit" should be applied to public school teachers (test scores). Remember, a corporation can and does choose its employees, "the best and brightest," and so forth -- people who, on paper anyway, show all the promise of being "strong performers." Public schools do not choose their students. They take anyone who comes through the door -- as it should be -- with all of their problems of class, family problems, neighborhood, etc.
