Merit pay for teachers not such a great idea

Alan Remington

Regarding teacher merit pay, when you come right down to the nuts and

bolts, merit pay for teachers isn’t as good an idea as it might seem

-- not because it’s not a good idea, but because the judging will

need to be mostly subjective, and when talking money, objectivity is

more sensible.

Retired now, almost 30 years ago I left the business world to

teach. As a small business owner with fewer than 250 employees, I had

been able to give merit raises. Talented people were the heart of my

business, and that was a good way to keep them. The school at that

time was also a tightly run ship. No more.

As the public seems to sense but is unable to pin down in

specifics, their tax dollar supports a bloated educational

bureaucracy. At one time, the curriculum determined the budget. Now

the school’s educational programs are allocated whatever is left.

Good teachers deserve more money than they get, and merit pay might

seem like a quick fix, but it’s like putting a Band-Aid on cancer. A

better solution than merit pay might be to take a good, hard look at

the entire education payroll. We need to be paying more to those who

come in direct daily contact with our kids rather than to those who

merely handle the paperwork. There are administrators making more

than $100,000, while some teachers earn a third of that. Which is

more valuable to our society?

* ALAN REMINGTON is a resident of Costa Mesa.