I Get Merit Pay!

For a while I’ve been in limbo about merit pay for teachers, or providing bonuses to enhance teacher salaries based on their professional performance or students’ achievement.  I thought I was leaning toward this being a good thing, given my past professional experience in business where bonuses and raises were measured on performance improvement.  Now, I’m simply in limbo that this is neither a good nor bad thing, but an irrelevant thing.

Here’s my line of reasoning:

1. My core belief as an educator is that learning is central to living, intrinsic motivation is essential for learning, and the example we show teaches much more than anything we say in the classroom.  Thus, if I were to choose a system of extrinsic motivation, I would be modeling a social convention of greed that I fundamentally oppose.
2. I don’t think I could work or think harder about improving my profession and my students even if earning more depended upon it.  I would extend this to the best teachers I know that this is a passionate calling that we would pursue at personal cost regardless of the reimbursement. (Perhaps this is why the burnout rate is 50% of new teachers within the first five years?)
3. The small amount of research on pay-for-performance teaching shows about no difference in student performance by teachers who did or didn’t receive incentives.  In a profession where we are lacking and trying to create collaboration, incentivizing an individual would further exploit this problem.
4. Finally, I already receive merit pay.  Just last week a grandparent volunteer told me, “You’re smarter than you look”, responding to the effort he observes me exerting to challenge my kids and their families’ thinking.  A few days before, a parent from four years ago called me at home merely to share with me that her son and daughter, my former students, had received accolades for their school performance.  I wouldn’t venture to infer that their prowess had anything to do with my teaching years before, but I am sure the care I gave that family was reciprocated in that voicemail.

The way education is going, our profession may go the way of merit pay through powers beyond me.  Either way I already receive merit pay and I really appreciate it. What do you think?