Quote:
Originally Posted by aklim
I'm curious as to why. Can't you offer your services elsewhere or is there some issue with that?
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It's complex. I, along with virtually ever other teacher in the US, work in a bureaucracy. One reason is that no individual's pay can be raised above any others who have the same merit rating according to the rules of the merit system in place. The other is that the money to do such a thing is not available. Since the money did not have to be spent on teacher's salaries it has been and is being spent on other things. (such as administrators. While it is almost impossible to believe, for every full time faculty member in the system in which I teach, there are 1.2 full time administrators) In other words, the merit pay system was a method of re-allocating funds. The only way to change that allocation would be to return to a system which by legal requirement changed the way money had to be spent.
As for merit pay improving efficiency and teaching, such a claim is absurd. My wife (who is by the way, not on a merit system) will be observed by an administrator (who is paid far higher than a teacher), at least 5 times this year. Next year the observation form will be at least 56 pages long and will have to be filled out by an administrator for every single teacher in her school. Does anyone who has actually worked under these conditions think that it improves the quality of teaching? I see absolutely no evidence that it does.