<p>I was at a Junior State of America Convention this weekend and we had a really interesting debate pertaining to whether teachers in public high schools should be given merit pay based on standardized test scores, peer/parent/student evaluations. I'm interested to see what people think.</p>
<p>Standardized test scores as in tests given to the students or the teacher in question?</p>
<p>If it's the students, I disagree - there are too many stupid kids out there for that to be an effective method of judgment, and the teachers who teach more advanced classes would score higher almost automatically. I do agree that merit-based pay is a good idea, though.</p>
<p>I think that the salaries for teachers should be raised in general, which would come from the money for the stadium/athletic equipment. That will have to be funded by bake sales for a first.</p>
<p>silentsailor...I wanted to refrain from posting my opinion at first to see what others thought, but you voiced my exact opinion. Test scores (they are the students' BTW) are no real representation of a teacher's merit, only the students. Even if you base it on the amount of improvement a class has, it is ultimately up to the student (or SAT tutor, etc, which raises more problems). And all reviews of teachers, whether they be peer, student, or parent, are biased. Teachers will give their friends high marks; students will give high grades to the "cool" teachers or will give bad scores to the teachers in subjects they hate (like math); and parents should have no say as they are not in the classroom. I agree that merit pay is a good idea, but there is no way to practically impliment one.</p>
<p>theres a good piece on this in Freakonomics by Stephan Levitt. basically it inspires unqualified teachers(not all highschool teachers are up to scratch) to cheat.</p>