Merit pay based on student achievement should be a significant component of K-12 teacher compensatio

When it comes to the human race we often don't think about the long term consequences of our actions. That short term success isn't always good for the long term success. This is why my partner and I urge a con ballot on the following topic: Merit pay based on student achievement should be a significant component of K-12 teacher compensation in United States public schools. Contention one Teacher merit is too hard to measure for merit-pay to be fair Merit pay is incentive to pay based on test scores, or significant improvement in students. But there is no accurate way to measure & define achievement & performance with standardized testing. With this teachers would teach for the test, students would simply be taught how to answer certain questions, rather than receiving an actual education. The System also cannot simply reward high scores, if it did it would not only reward teachers with already excelling rates, nor can the system solely reward improvement, if so it would unfairly penalize teachers whose students were already scoring to well to post significant gain. The problem with merit-based pay is that there's no reasonable, rational, consistent way to measure performance... teaching is more art than science. Every student is different, with a unique perspective, background, learning style, and, more importantly, pace of development. To penalize a teacher for having a group of students who develop more slowly than others is absurd. No matter how good the teacher is, there's no way to force a child to develop faster than they're capable of doing. Contention two: There are negative outcomes of merit pay Particularly with education, incentive pay could have extreme reverse outcomes. A study Done by the Urban Institute conclude that most merit pay plans"did not succeed at implementing lasting and effective plans that demonstrate ability to improve student learning". With problems including low teacher morality because of increased competition, teachers being upset because they didn't get the awards they deserved, and merit pay plans are costly and time consuming. According to the same Institute, there were several merit pay systems in existence in Pennsylvania school districts during the late 1970's. All of those merit pay plans were abandoned in favor of the salary schedule. As is the case with many traditional merit pay plans, theses plans resulted in serious inequities among teachers with similar skill and performance levels, which created morale problems. There was no evidence that the plans improved performance. In most cases, the school boards sought to elimate them. Contention three: Past examples of merit pay for teachers have failed Merit pay comes in many forms and flavors -- including extra bonuses for student achievement gains, satisfactory evaluations by principals or committees, acquiring additional duties, gaining new skills and knowledge, and serving in hard-to-staff schools. We've looked at dozens of plans in North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Guess what? None of them, past and present, has ever had a successful track record. None has ever produced its intended results. Any gains have been minimal, short-lived, and expensive to achieve. For these reasons I and my partner negate the resolution.