Merit Pay

Merit Pay

Shortly following World War I, school administrators instituted the principles outlined by Frederick Taylor's Scientific Management which made school environments more rigorous, efficient, and businesslike. These steps were taken to assure a higher rate of productivity, accountability, and performance. Each measure was instituted to get more out of teachers by presenting them with the proposition that their salary would be based solely on their performance in educating students. Merit pay was first instituted by Ellwood P. Cubberley, perhaps the most influential educator of his time, who presented the idea to overcome the poor uses of funds that was known as a uniform salary schedule. He encouraged school administrators that teachers who represented the high quality of education were those who were deserving of a higher salary. Also, he recommended that having all teachers ranked the same no matter how well they performed would dictate to evaluators the meaning that they were approximately of equal worth (Johnson, 1984).

Merit pay can be visualized as a pay scale solely based on performance and a positive evaluation of how well others learn from teachers. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan urged that teachers be paid and promoted on the basis of their merit and competence. He was met with a wide range of public dissatisfaction because it proposed a higher degree of logic, simplicity, and congruence with American values (Johnson, 1984).

Supporters claim there is no alternative policy that can reflect the same positive

goals as a merit pay system. They believe that merit pay is a fragile system that requires careful planning and tending that has time and time again failed because of lack of

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support by the teaching population as a whole (Johnson, 1984).

Merit pay has met great success in the military, government, law firms, corporate businesses and several other major industries where the goal of all workers is to perform at a higher level than their peers to advance and generate higher salaries. Those in favor of merit pay believe its only a matter of time before teachers and school administrators can come to an agreement and institute a merit pay system that will effectively benefit all who partake in the processes (Johnson, 1984).

Although the overall presentation of merit pay presents itself with a negative approach, there are several positive effects that many school administrators can use to benefit their educational performance. Teachers should be afforded the opportunity to achieve their highest potential and be rewarded for it. In doing so, teachers who are successfully meeting the education goals would remain in their current positions while those not meeting the standards would be dissuaded from continuing in education. Simply, merit pay is consistent with the moral standards of free enterprise (Johnson, 1984).

Not only would administrators view the performance of teachers, but the teachers would be allotted the opportunity to be critical of their own work. Proponents of merit pay believe that when someone is critical on his own output it allows for a sense of

healthy and positive competition between himself and his peers. All that parents and public officials hear is the declining test scores, vandalism, violence, and the ever-

increasing decline of teacher qualifications, but by instituting merit pay, teachers will compete with one another to raise their students to the next level and present themselves

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as higher quality educators (Hess, 2004).

Another benefit of merit pay is that taxpayers would be more willing to support an education pay system if they were assured that their dollars were going to those who performed at the highest levels. Merit pay is viewed as a positive way to spend the decreasing funds that schools often discard into a sports program. Performance is but one factor in determining merit pay because years of service, earned degrees, quotas met, awards received and/or earned, and positive evaluations are all important fixtures when debating the raises of any individual educator. In 1983, 62.7 percent of teachers in the United States wanted a system of merit pay to be instituted because they believed that it would drive them to work harder, and it would benefit the increasing costs of payroll by weeding out the negative impact teachers (Johnson, 1984).

Whenever there are advantages to any program or situation, there are also strong supporting disadvantages. One disadvantage to merit pay has to do with deciding what the basis for evaluations is. There is no agreement about what good teaching is and how to measure it. So, without a scale to measure the performance of teachers, the evaluation system that is in support of most merit pay plans is unreliable and potentially inequitable.

Furthermore, merit pay is often regarded as not cost effective, and the competition is believed to undermine teacher morale and compromise collegiality. The plans simply interfere with effective supervision and encourage conformity rather than growth. Although merit pay rewards those who may be deserving of merit, it does not

allow advancement for those who are improving but still not meeting the standards. Improvements in the education system should be granted merit; no matter how big or

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small the improvement was (Hess, 2004).

Teachers often argue that merit pay systems create favoritism and allow them to

be the subject of abuse from administrators. Time and time again the process of merit

pay has failed in the past. It is also hard to implement the standards when the moral

compass of that program undermines the morale and productivity of the teachers. The environment and field are different, yet work is work, and cooperation is the most important factor between co-workers rather then the demeaning competition that often is encouraged by merit pay. In today's education system, teachers are at a shortage because of low retention rates, and a system that encourages competition for advancement would further discourage teachers from staying in the professions (Johnson, 1984).

Merit pay programs like those in Ladue, Missouri, and San Marino, California, are prime examples of successful long-lasting performance-based pay plans. Each of