Teacher merit pay is a joke. On what criteria do you base that merit? On test scores? As a high school teacher, no matter how hard I work there are always those students who just don’t care. Why should my job be tied to those. People outside education don’t realize that for many teachers teaching is not just a job, it is a lifestyle. True teachers work non-stop from sunrise to sunset most days of the week. That isn’t something that can be measured.

Well said "public school". I certainly disagree with this author who has never set a foot inisde the classroom let alone taught for any period of time. The biggest flaw in the argument is the reliance on an administrator to make the decision about a raise. Most in public education (in the trenches)will agree that many Administrators have become detached from the everyday issues and demands of the classroom. These so called proficiency exams do nothing to measure true growth, but only serve as window dressing from which administration can hang their hats and inflate their paychecks. I didn’t become a teacher to get rich and really enjoy the opportunity to wathc young people gorw into thinking citizens. Making education into a competition driven industry will definitely produce something closer to pornigraphy. Perhaps prositution. Now to get back to my grading.

Please excuse the poor typing skills. It has been a long day.