merit pay in education
...-performance programs can create “destructive competition” (Ramirez). The most prominent for-profit company to enter the school market has been the Edison Project. Its president, John Chubb, also has contempt for merit pay plans that try to reward individual teachers for test score gains. Nonunion Edison schools, where the company has the greatest flexibility to design compensation plans, give annual bonuses. But, says Chubb, "we never look at individual teachers when we think about rewarding effective performance," because everyone in a school contributes to academic gains. And in addition to test scores in several subjects, Edison also considers "customer satisfaction" (the feelings of parents), and qualitative evaluations of the school's program (in areas like music, for example) in deciding whether to award a school wide bonus. Opponents of merit pay rightly argue that teacher compensation cannot rest significantly on students' test scores, because teachers have only partial influence over how well students perform on standardized tests, and because individual merit pay plans defeat the teacher collaboration that education reform a...