Merit pay for teachers: a few links
An overview of merit pay issues from four different perspectives: The Debate over Teacher Merit Pay: a Freakonomics Quorum
This article by leading academic proponents of carefully-designed merit pay for teachers emphasizes the need to collaborate with teachers in designing merit pay. The Delicate Task of Developing an Attractive Merit Pay Plan for Teachers.
This paper sets out the background and history of teacher merit pay. It argues that the two big strands of education reform in the USA are in direct opposition to each other. Standardized, multiple-choice testing undermines efforts to broaden education for the 21st century. The paper is highly critical of gearing teacher pay to these 'inadequate' standardized tests. Teacher Merit Pay that Reinvigorates Standardized Testing.
This recent publication by The New Teacher Project, in support of merit pay for teachers, argues that "Lockstep teacher pay makes it harder for schools to fulfill what everyone agrees is their most important responsibility: giving students the best possible education". Shortchanged: The Hidden Costs of Lockstep Teacher Pay (from the School District website).
This commentary on Shortchanged: The Hidden Costs of Lockstep Teacher Pay by a Reynoldsburg-resident educator questions the report's relevance to Reynoldsburg and some of its assertions.