When I heard about this yesterday, I knew I wanted to chip in my toonie on the idea. As you’ll read in the article, I do think paying teachers is a fundamentally good idea, but it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Here’s why:
B.C. Liberal leadership candidate Kevin Falcon has raised a few eyebrows (and singed a few off) with his proposal to give cash incentives to teachers whose students demonstrate marked improvement in school in terms of graduation, attendance and grades.
Falcon promised that, should he win the leadership race, he would create a master teacher incentive program that would positively identify exceptional teachers and an incentive program that would reward schools. Read more ยป
Leave your thoughts in the comments. I’d be interested to hear them.
Merit pay rarely works well in the public service, as the outcomes are too subjective. It becomes a question of who decides and what criteria will be used to identify “master teachers”. The plan will make some resentful (those who are very good, but not masters). Teachers already have negotiated salaries, so the unions will not anyone to mess with their seniority schemes. Also, the bonuses will never sufficiently big to matter. It works well in the private sector where you can measure tangible outcomes like profit and sales and when the bonus is large enough to be an incentive. A bad idea …
Merit pay for teachers won’t work because it is against the rules to pay less than minimum wage.
I can’t see this idea working out,for all the reasons “L” mentions,and that any overseer of teachers would have to be from their ranks for their observations to have any validity.
A better idea is education funding by the voucher system,whereby parents can take their kids to any school that will have them,such as private schools,and traditional schools.
Under the voucher system, it would quickly become apparent which schools teachers did the best job educating the students.
Note that whenever a “traditional” school opens for business,the applicants are camped out for a week in advance,waiting to register their kids.
This occurred in Abbotsford when I lived there in the 90′s. The parents voted on the school system very clearly.
Hey all,
When I saw this on the news the other day I shuddered. The vagueness of Falcon’s proposal (I believe he used the term “inspire passion” several times, or something like it) will make education worse, not better.
The worst teachers I had in high school were the ones involved in after school activities –primarily coaches. I was a jock, and remember overhearing a conversation with the basketball coach and the football coach. The dribbler freely admitted that during the season his classes “went to sh*t”. “I’m not here to teach” he said, “I’m here to coach the basketball team.” We had recently won provincial championships, so everybody loved him. Our school was in the paper a lot because of his team, and he no doubt would qualify as a “master teacher” under Falcon’s plan. Sitting through his history class was a joke.
My English teacher, on the other hand, was a constant thorn in the side of the school administration because she enforced discipline. Her classes were brilliant, and she was a hard marker: in an era of scan-tron tests that can be marked in minutes, she’d fill page after page with comments. Because of her personality, and the fact that she didn’t coach a team, she’d never qualify for such a bonus.
Teachers don’t need bonuses. They need real leadership from the Ministry of Education. Falcon’s airy-fairy proposal should be all the proof anyone needs that he’s not the man for the job.
Cheers,
J
Agreed. And I don’t think I emphasized that shortcoming enough. Identifying this criteria will be too subjective and difficult. As you say, it’s more tangible in the private sector. But schools are cash-strapped as it is. Where would we get the money for performance bonuses?
My kid’s school can’t even afford a playground or extra-curricular activities.
It would be nice if there were a school for my kid, without the exorbitant costs of private school, because he’s tested as gifted but there’s nowhere to put him.
A merit pay system will create more bureaucracy and increase education costs while accomplishing nothing. The teachers and their union will figure out a way to game the system.
There is a simple solution: A voucher system will reduce cost AND allow the market to reward the good teachers and remove the weak ones.
Fat chance of that happening!
In theory, I love the idea of merit-based pay. I use it with my own staff. I just don’t see how you would ever make it work in the teaching profession.
One thing I would like to do with teachers is remove the stupid seniority-based protections that unions provide. Teachers who don’t measure up should be fired by their schools as easily as an employee in the private sector is turfed for inadequate performance. Furthermore, whatever opportunities, benefits, promotions and perks that are available to teachers should be available to all based on ability and merit without regard to their seniority. Sure, experience can be taken into consideration as part of assessment of ability, but specifc criteria based on seniority is just crap.
Full disclosure: my father was a teacher for something close to 40 years and although I know he was compensated very well, he did work hard at his job and cared a lot about kids.
It’s hard to quantify his worth, or what effect he had on thousands of kids.
Any attempt to improve teaching in our schools must begin by decertifying the unions which maintain a death grip on all aspects of education.
As a retired teacher with 34 years in classrooms in Ontario, the U.K., Australia and finally B.C., I have seen the harm done by unions in fighting to the death to protect useless ‘teachers’ and keep them in the classroom (to collect their membership dues) and to stifle the great teachers by deriding their efforts to bring innovation to their students, to keep schools open when locals decide to close schools by picket lines, and to oppose the socialist bias of union bosses.
Frankly, education under the current system is merely the instillation of propaganda into impressionable young minds. It has become the goal to reduce excellence to mediocrity, to steer budget funds to pet projects for poor teachers who follow the party line, and to lean on those who defy the socialist agenda until they become disheartened enough to depart the profession.