It’s no secret that American schools are failing its students. With 33 percent of American students dropping out of high school and American students trailing behind internationally in math and science, it is obvious that the education system is in serious need of reform… but not at the expense or benefit of the teachers’ paycheck.
Just recently, U.S. President Barack Obama announced that he wanted to establish national standards in math and reading by revising the Bush administration’s “No Child Left Behind” law. Instead of having a various set of standards, the entire country would have more homogeneous educational standards. By pumping more money into education and raising the benchmark for schools, Obama hopes to make American students more able to globally compete as well as put American students on track towards college or a career.
In 2009, Obama suggested that teachers should be awarded merit pay in which teachers’ paychecks would tied to their students’ performance. A year later, states such as Colorado have now offered to expand merit pay to compete for the Obama administration’s federal funding. While this idea may sound rewarding, the problem with merit pay is that a good, extremely qualified teacher could easily be punished for the indolence of his or her students while an incompetent or mediocre teacher could receive an undeserved bonus for the hard work and dedication of his or her students.
In inner city schools, many dedicated teachers are saddled with students from broken homes while mediocre teachers in rich, prestigious schools are gifted with students from more stable communities. Although Obama’s plan to aid poor students will financially level the playing field, the sad reality is that in inner city schools, many students come from less-educated families where school was seen as unimportant or not a top priority, whereas the majority of students from rich, prestigious schools came from well-off parents who always stressed the importance of education, thus putting even the most mediocre teachers with the best students at an advantage and the most hard-working inner city teachers with the most troubled students at a disadvantage for merit pay.
In addition, the expansion of merit pay could lead to an influx of teachers wanting to teach for the merit pay and not necessarily the joy of helping young minds grow. Instead of focusing on educating their students, some teachers could become more fixated on passing standardized tests to get merit pay and less on educating and stimulating the minds of their students. The purpose of merit pay would be to reward good teachers in their excellence, not to reward teachers for their greed.
As the daughter of two former teachers, I can honestly say that the best teachers are those who enter the educational field with the intention of helping others, not with the agenda of gaining benefits. After all, the reward for a teacher should be seeing his or her students succeed, not another paycheck.
