Thoughts on the Failure of Merit Pay
Dear Deborah,
Teacher merit pay is one of the hot "new" ideas of the moment. It has the wholehearted support of the Obama administration, which made it one of the criteria for states hoping to win a piece of Race to the Top funding. The Obama administration has also proposed spending nearly $1 billion for merit-pay programs in fiscal 2011. The president never tires of saying that we should pay more to "our best teachers," and we know that he approves of using standardized test scores to identify the "best teachers." Now, with the ascendancy of very conservative Republican governors and legislatures, merit pay is on the front burner in many states.
Let me say, as an aside, that it is breathtaking to see how closely aligned are the agendas of conservative governors and the Obama administration when it comes to education.
It is curious that teachers vigorously oppose merit pay, even though they are the ones who are supposed to reap the rewards. What do they know? They know that merit pay undermines collaboration and teamwork. They know