Compensation and Benefit: Teacher Merit Pay Pros, Cons & Global Views

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of teacher merit pay systems, examining their implementation, benefits, and drawbacks across different countries like the USA, UK, and Australia. It explores the arguments for and against merit pay, including its potential to motivate teachers, attract talent, and improve student performance, as well as concerns about fairness, undermining collaboration, and focusing on test scores rather than holistic student development. The essay also delves into the role of teachers' unions, the challenges of measuring teacher effectiveness, and the importance of considering both financial and non-financial rewards. Ultimately, it highlights the complexity of designing effective compensation systems for teachers and the need to address issues of fairness, validity, and teacher morale to improve educational outcomes. Desklib offers a platform to access similar solved assignments and study resources.

Running head: COMPENSTION AND BENEFIT 1
Compensation and Benefit
Name
Institution

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Introduction
A system in which part of compensation is based on evaluating the employees’ job
performance is what we refer to as teacher merit pay. Combinations of factors are used in the
evaluation of this. We have judgment by supervisors, students’ scores and many more. In most
cases, merit pay for teachers is practiced in the private sector. It is in 1908 in Newton,
Massachusetts, that merit pay was implemented in the United State, but it did not succeed. This
is because if failed in its achievement of national popularity (Hanushek & Welch, 2011).
Teachers union in the US tends to oppose merit because of various reasons; for instance, merit
pay undermines the teacher’s union monopoly. It may undermine the seniority system and other
agreements. Through merit pay, teachers, parents and even the students will know the worst
performing teachers and there might be increased pressure to let them go. Dishonesty and
corruption are some of the things that would be encouraged through merit pay since results from
testing would be driven by the educators’ financials motivation. There would also be favors for
some teachers by the school administration or the principle. According to Ballou & Podgursky,
1993, ethnic minorities and low salaries teachers are likely to support merit pay (Jirhan, 2016).
The union also has an overriding interest in maintaining teacher solidarity and teacher pay is
an enormous percent of school budgets meaning that a raise for one teacher effectively comes at
the expense of his colleagues and may create misunderstandings among teachers. Merit pay
would not be effective in improving schools and may intern reduce their effectiveness. Those
who stand to benefit from merit pay are administrators and politicians not teachers. Strike
explains this principle pertaining to merit pay in a nut shell, “inequality in the distribution of

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resources is permitted only if all benefit”. If some teachers receive merit pay and some do not,
this clearly portrays that the resources have been unequally distributed (Blazer, 2011).
The programmer will only create competition and division among teachers hence destroying
their morale making it more of an administration night mare. The view of teachers’ union
regarding the current crisis in education is; for the teachers’ pay to be raised instead of designing
and regulating a programmer that will do a lot of bad than good to the teachers, pay teachers
what they are worth. According to research, the reason why most merit schemes don’t last is
because of issues pertaining to fairness and validity during evaluation of teachers. These
standards should be fair and accurate representation of their work (Archibald & Odden, 2009).
In the United Kingdom, performance management system has been introduced by the
government in England and Wales, this management system is known as the teacher insensitive
pay project, where state school teachers are rewarded according to their excellence in the
classroom. Goal setting and appraisal with performance pay are some of the factors comprising
the project. The National Union of Teachers, which is the largest teachers’ union in the UK, was
most opposed to this threshold process and even went a notch higher and took this case to high
court to prevent this process from proceeding. Measuring the many and complex teaching tasks
created a lot of difficulties. (OECD, 2011).
This exercises only made teachers to feel aggrieved and not valued, lack of trust between
employers and the teachers and poor communication, contributed towards this. According to
Wragg et al (2004), 97% of the teachers who applied for phase one went through the threshold
successfully. Wragg et al, (2004), found out that not much had changed since the
implementation of the threshold. Majority of the beneficial of this system, teachers and head

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teachers, were against it. Farrell & Morris (2004) described that teachers felt aggrieved and left
out in the exercise; poor communication about the process; trust issues between the employers
and the employees, and trust is believed to be the best binding agent and is an essential feature
required for a successful reward scheme; poor understanding of the teaching culture which is a
determining factor to market employment culture where performance scheme considered;
looking down on team work and the educational ethos.
Merit pay does nothing in improving teachers’ performance; it has positive short lived
effects and mostly fails at implementing plans that are effective and lasting. Merit pay motivates
teachers to focus less on their students and more on test scores. This greatly affects the students
since most teachers will only concentrate on the students’ scores rather than the students
themselves. Merit pay also undercuts valuable cooperation between teachers. As teachers,
teaching is all about working together and in harmony. With merit pay, the cooperation between
teachers will be interfered with since the majority will be cooperating with one’s self rather than
with other teachers. Teachers’ motivation, as much as it comes from extrinsic motivations,
should begin from within them. A teacher should have the passion to teach, the drive to make
students succeed, with merit pay, teachers are more focused on measures (Levine & Zimmerman,
2010).
Australia doesn’t have a long history of utilizing merit pay program for teachers. All schools
in Australia that are owned by the government work under collective agreement or government
industrial award. There is an increment pay scale that Australian teaches are on, that moves up as
the years of experience increases. Those teachers who gain higher and further academic
qualifications fail to be recognized in the Australian system. The education unions in Australia
are in support for the development of professional standards for teachers with the addition of

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their profession in their development. Odden & Kelly, (1996) Argues that the teachers’
knowledge on curriculum and classroom management techniques are some of the qualities that
the awards should be focused on. There has been a long dissatisfaction with the flat salary rate
may be among the reasons that led to the support of this program which offered a much more
comfortable way of moving beyond the scale. They viewed merit pay as a way of motivating
teachers to continue working hard and increase their efforts. The teacher’s hard work will in turn
increase the student performance. Performance based pay has led to the development of clear
goals and a culture that is performance based oriented within schools. This in turn motivates
people with financial and non-financial rewards (English, 2012).
Monetary awards uplift the socio-economic status of teachers, which in turn is used as an
attraction and motivation for individuals in a more talented pool of people. That is, it brings in
the most qualified teachers and is used as a discouraging factor to the least competence. The
Australian teachers’ union believes that the best of the graduates can only get attracted to a
competitive market-based system. Merit pay, in Australia, is important because it helps attract
teachers where they are shortages of teachers. It would act as a motivation to the qualified
teachers to give teaching as a profession more consideration as a career choice that is viable,
rather than a profession that one has to sacrifice to get into (Liang, 2013).

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USA AUSTRALIA UK
Competitive individuals.
merit pay plan decreases
motivation and causes
division among teachers
Merit pay motivates
teachers to perform their
best and attracts individuals
from a more talented pool.
Merit pay plan decreases
motivation among teachers
and causes division.
Merit pay would lead to
the identification of poor
performing teachers and this
may cause them their jobs.
Those teachers who perform
poorly would get low
salaries.
Poor performing teachers
would be forced to stop
working.
Rewards added academic
credentials in salary
increment
Those teachers who further
their education are not
recognized.
Merit pay does not
contribute in the
improvement of the
students’ performance.
Since the teacher focuses
more on the test scores than
the student.
Improves both teacher
and student learning. Since
it gives the teachers an
incentive to work harder to
produce better results.
Merit pay is only
beneficial to the teachers
since the student is not the
media for attention in merit
pay.
Merit pay kills the
intrinsic motivation in
teachers and focuses
teachers on measures over
Merit pay attracts and
retains qualified teachers in
the market.
Teachers focus more on
the extrinsic motivation
hence destroying their inner
passion for teaching.

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their passion.
Merit pay undermines
one of the core principles of
teaching and learning which
is; collaboration.
Merit pay helps attract
teachers where there is
shortage of teachers.
Merit pay undercuts
valuable cooperation
between teachers.
Merit pay for teachers
encourages corruption and
dishonesty in school since a
lot of teacher will be
providing fake results in test
scores. The principle may
also favor some teachers.
Through merit pay thee is
a lot of unjustness since it’s
hard to quantify the qualities
needed for one to receive
this pay.
Teacher merit can be
measured and help
determine pay.
It’s hard to measure the
merits of a teacher or find
the best criteria to use.
Those who stand to
benefit from merit pay are
administrators and
politicians not teachers.
Merit pay is beneficial to
the teachers and the
students.

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References
Blazer, C. (2011). Status of Teacher Performance Pay Programs Across the United States.
Information Capsule.
English, F. W. (2012). Educational Leadership at 2050: Conjectures, Challenges, and Promises.
Lanham, MD: R&L Education.
Ha`nushek, E. A., Welch, F., Machin, S., & Woessmann, L. (2011). Handbook of the Economics
of Education. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Elsevier.
Jirjahn, U. (2016). Performance Pay and Productivity: A Note on the Moderating Role of a High-
wage Policy. Managerial and Decision Economics, 37(7), 507-511. doi:10.1002/mde.2786
Levine, P. B., & Zimmerman, D. J. (2010). Targeting Investments in Children: Fighting Poverty
When Resources Are Limited. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Liang, G. (2016). Pay and Performance: Why Pay Incentives May Not Raise Productivity.
doi:10.4135/9781473988668
Liang, G. (2013). Performance-Related Pay for Teachers: An Updated Review. Postdoc Journal.
doi:10.14304/surya.jpr.v1n1.10
OECD. (2011). Establishing a Framework for Evaluation and Teacher Incentives Considerations
for Mexico: Considerations for Mexico. Paris, France: OECD Publishing.
OECD. (2009). Evaluating and Rewarding the Quality of Teachers: International Practices.
Paris, France: OECD Publishing.

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Odden, A. R., & Archibald, S. J. (2009). Doubling Student Performance: And Finding the
Resources to Do It. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
UNESCO. (2017). Accountability in education: meeting our commitments: Global education
monitoring report, 2017/8. Paris, France: UNESCO Publishing.
Winters, M. A. (2012). Teachers Matter: Rethinking how Public Schools Identify, Reward, and
Retain Great Educators. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

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