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Project 2 Rough Draft

A major issue that faces the community of educators of the world is fighting for the
opportunity for wages that they deem as fair. There is research that shows that the funds are
available, thus educators are pushing for increases in pay. There is also a push to, rather than
just awarding a pay raise, to transition into a method of compensation referred to as performance
pay. As the title would suggest, rather than earning a salary based on a tier system, or based on
seniority and experience of teachers, the majority of their salaries would be based on how well
they performed throughout their year. The one thing that is apparent is that adjusting teachers
salaries is not as simple as an increase or transitioning the basis on which they are paid.
Educators are a constantly growing, and constantly diversifying group of workers.
Demographics are showing trends of ballooning, graying, greening, and becoming a more female
dominated field of work. Research released from the Schools and Staffing Survey have shown
that Although elementary and secondary student enrollment (public, private, and charter) has
risen 19 percent since the mid-1980s, the number of teachers has increased at a far faster rate,
growing 48 percent (Ingersoll and Merrill 16). This can be explained by a few different
phenomena including decreases in class sizes over the years, increases in the number of different
subjects taught over the years, and the number of classes taught per day. Another aspect of the
demographics of the teaching community is in the increasing of the graying and greening
community which is the concept that teacher demographics are beginning to become slightly
polarize between the upper and lower age groups. One must also consider the growing female
domination of teaching that has come about over time. This change in the female-to-male ratio
has not been caused by a decline in the number of males entering teaching that number has

grown by 26 percent since 198788. But the number of female teachers grew almost twice as
much during the same period (Ingersoll and Merrill 18).
Along with affecting the composition of the teaching community, these changes in size,
and diversity also contribute to the issue at hand that is teacher wages. As the size of the
educator community grow a road block for raising the wages of teachers arises, because
obviously it is not realistic to continuously give more money to teachers, as the group grows
every year. That is to say, in order to logically be able to maintain increasing salaries for a group
that increases in size from year to year, there would need to be an increase in the funding or
budget to pay these teachers as time elapsed. The graying and greening concept work together in
a complimentary nature as The aging of the teaching force has cost implications for school
budgets and state pension systems. Veteran teachers earn higher salaries, and the increased
number of retirees requires greater spending on pensions. But if schools replace retirees with
new teachers, who earn lower salaries and who pay into state pension plans, these additional
costs could be absorbed (Ingersoll and Merrill 17). Because of the sort of give and take that
this polarization provides, the majority of the costs are cancelled out mitigating any damage to
funding for education.
As far as the communities view of the issue, there is an obvious push by teachers to
demand increased compensation for their work, and according to Martin Haberman, that money
needed for said increase exists. Haberman writes School districts currently spend $2.6 billion
annually on maintaining a system of recruiting and hiring teachers who quit or fail (327) and he
attacks this waste of money stating Spending $2.6 billion annually on quitter/failure teachers is
actually worse than simply shoveling the money into Lake Michigan (Haberman 333). There
would be better applications for this money such as spreading that $2.6 billion across the 7

million children in impoverished schools to allow $375 more per student per year, or Another
alternative would be to begin by applying the $2.6 billion to raising teacher salaries in the 2,000
failing high schools which we have known about for years but do nothing about (Haberman
333). This clearly shows that there is a viable option to increase the salaries for our educators,
by simply trimming out unnecessary programs within the education system.
There are also pushes to potentially pull funding from other areas in order to enable
increased teacher pay. The U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan had a proposal in October
of 2015 that would shift $15 billion of prison spending to education to raise wages for educators.
The plan followed the Two-Pronged Approach which would take money saved by redirecting
half of nonviolent criminal offenders away from prison, and used for substantial pay hikes for
teachers working in the highest-poverty schools (Ujifusa 14). Ujifusa also states that the money
saved by this legislation would aid in retention and attract high-quality teachers to work in the
field of education.
So obviously there are methods through which higher teacher compensation can be
attained, but why does this matter? What is the importance of salary as it applies to retention and
teacher attrition? It turns out that Salary is one of the most significant predictors of teacher
attrition however it can be view at times as a lower priority because of the fact that many of
the intrinsic perks of being a teacher such as holidays and summers off, as well as becoming
attached to the subject one teaches (Kelly 196). Kelly states Salary, I would argue, is an
important symbolic measure of the importance a society places on the work one does (197)
which he elaborates on as he discusses how when Murnane et al. (1989) used individual traits,
including standardized test scores and subject matter affiliation, to predict the attrition in North
Carolina and found that high performing teachers and those teaching science left sooner than

other teachers, presumably because of better opportunities outside of teaching (197). He


attributes this alarming finding to the disparity between teacher salaries and the labor market
value for some teachers (Kelly 197). However in contrast, an article by Linda C. Morice and
James E. Murray titled Compensation and Teacher Retention: A Success Story states The fact
that teachers enter their profession for the intrinsic satisfaction of working with students does not
rule out the possibility that they will be motivated by extrinsic factors as well (43). Therefore,
one may draw the conclusion that though the salary a teacher makes may take a back seat in
reality to some of the other beneficial perks at times, salary is still incredibly important, because
educators tend to view it as not only their pay, but also what the market values their work at.
Education is an invaluable tool, that must not be over looked, and that is the main cause for
frustration in educators.
In an interview conducted with Ms. Caitlyn Casali, a Hillsborough County public school
teacher, Casali was asked What is your opinion on the current rate of teacher salaries? Do you
believe the pay is adequate? to which she replied, frankly, No. (Kraatz 2). She writes that she
cannot currently support herself living alone, and paying off student debts, and that she lives
paycheck to paycheck (Kraatz 2). She later responded to a separate question, questioning how
merit based pay and pay increases should be implemented, that though teachers that have been in
the industry longer, should be pair a greater salary, that younger teachers who are just starting
out, should at least be paid enough to pay for a place to live, food to eat, and still be able to pay
off some of their student loans that they now face. So if salary is so awful, what motivates
teachers to continue in the profession?
Casali was then asked why she taught and why she returned every year to continue her
profession and Casali responded that it was because she loved her job (Kraatz 3). She spoke

about how she loved her job because she could help kids learn about the world and that she
was able to make their lives better by just listening to them without judging them (Kraatz 3).
This furthers the concepts claimed by Kelly, above, that teachers are retained not solely based on
salary but that there are other, less tangible things that aid in teacher retention. Casali also
speaks about how she gets to teach and talk about physics all day, her favorite subject. When
asked about the affect salary has on her retention as a teacher she responded Obviously, not a
very big one (Kraatz 3).
Even based on all of these statistics about how money can be pooled to increase salaries,
or how important teacher salary really is, it must be presented logically to the outside world in
order for the issue to be fairly combatted. The most direct way that teachers voice their
discontent for their current salaries, and how much they desire pay increases, is by teacher
retention. If a teacher is unhappy with their compensation they voice that distaste by just flat out
leaving the occupational field of education. They are attempting to twist the arm of the
educational system, and of the state and national legislatures by leaving in hopes that their
persuasion will be effective enough to show that poor compensation will lead to poor retention.
Teachers also present information to other educators in an attempt to inform or persuade other
teachers on whether or not it is worth leaving the teaching profession.
Teachers also have been known to unionize in order to fight for the pay increases they
believe they deserve. When asked about her encounters with teachers fighting for pay increases
Casali stated I know the union was pushing for it a few months ago, and as a result teachers in
Hillsborough County were bumped up a level, which resulted in a pay increase for some
teachers (Kraatz 1). As teachers unionize they force their respective counties into corners,
demanding pay increases until they receive them. Casali believes that the unions are doing what

they believe is the right actions, and though she voices discontent for the aggression in that it has
not solved any political problem she retorts that logic and reasoned discourse arent really
working either (Kraatz 1). So though not all teachers necessarily back the aggressive nature put
forth by some unionization of educators, they do accept that something must be done in order to
reach out and spread awareness of the issue that they face.
Educators also employ an informative genre by using articles such as Compensation and
Teacher Retention: A Success Story discusses that a survey asked teachers what percent of the
funds available for salary increases should be allocated to points reflecting the performance
evaluation and what percent should go toward an across-the-board adjustment given equally to
all teachers (42). The results of said survey yielded that The majority of teachers (56.86
percent) preferred that 80 percent of the funds available for salary increases be allocated to
points earned and that 20 percent go to an across-the-board adjustment. Another 14.71 percent of
the teachers favored determining the entire salary increase by the performance evaluation.
Almost all of the remaining respondents favored either a 50/50 split (24.02 percent) or a split of
20 percent for performance points and 80 percent for an across-the-board adjustment (3.92
percent) (Morice and Murray 42).
Even granted all of these methods for budgeting and subsidizing teacher salary increases,
simply increasing teacher salaries is not a fair thing to do necessarily, and thus the concept of
performance pay or merit may is introduced. The United States Department of Labor states that
Merit pay, also known as pay-for-performance, is defined as a raise in pay based on a set of
criteria set by the employer. This usually involves the employer conducting a review meeting
with the employee to discuss the employee's work performance during a certain time period. As
this applies to teaching merit pay is compensation based on the success of their students that is

measured by standardized test scores, pass rates, and other factors. It enjoyed popularity during
the rush to embrace scientific management theories early in the 20th century and was used as a
combatant to the rising tide of mediocrity in U.S. public schools in the 1980s (Johnson and
Papay 49). The program was discontinued for a variety of reasons including inadequate
funding, faulty evaluation systems, union opposition, or outcries that the awards were
unintelligible, wrong-headed, or biased, however there has recently been a second coming of
merit pay and most teachers are once again being rewarded, on a smaller scale, based on test
scores, and transfers to hard to staff schools (Johnson and Papay 49). With the use of merit
pay, the conflict of whether or not teachers deserve pay increases or how much they may deserve
becomes irrelevant because the system rewards the teachers, based on a set of criteria for their
work.
The resurgence of merit pay is attempting to take form in the way of The tiered pay-andcareer structure which is designed to attract strong candidates to teaching, support their
development, and offer substantially higher pay to those who perform well and take on
responsibility for improving instruction beyond their classroom (Johnson and Papay 49). Once
again, implementing this plan will put a reason behind increasing teacher pay rather than just
increasing it based on the concept of rating the importance of education a job outright. With
merit pay, you can see tangible results that enable you to justify offering the wage increases.
Performance pay however is not always a fool proof or perfect plan. There are many
factors that go into the concept of rating performance for compensation including defining what
good versus bad performance entails. There are also some generalizations that must be made
that do not necessarily hold up. For example three major assumptions about the current

performance based pay systems are that: teachers lack motivation, schools are failing, and that
measuring academic achievement is all that counts.
Assumption one asserts that performance based pay is ineffective because of the fact that
teachers lack motivation. In the article The Problem with Performance Pay Donald B. Gratz
writes that If we believe that additional pay will motivate teachers to work harder, we must also
believe that teachers know what to do to improve student achievementand that they arent
doing it because they arent sufficiently motivated (78). In short we assume teachers must be
knowingly withholding knowledge from students and that by offering a bonus that we can bribe
them into presenting their students with that information.
Assumption two states that the schools are failing and thus merit pay is flawed. As stated
above, the original use of performance pay was based on the fact that the school system was
believed to have been subpar when compared to other nations, and was thus used to try and
compensate and fix the schooling system. Over time Schools were blamed for letting the
USSRs Sputnik beat us into space in the 1950s, for economic collapse in the 1980s, and for
economic inequality in the early 2000s. U.S. students are accused of lagging behind their peers in
other countries, and a wide range of reports over the past two decades has predicted economic
disaster in the future because, the reports claim, todays students are unprepared for work and
will not be productive (Gratz 78). Many of the comparisons from the U.S. schooling system to
foreign schooling systems were based on comparisons to specific groups of students in other
countries whilst those in American schools were broader of surveys according to Gratzs research
(78). This means that American schools are not necessarily failing, just because certain studies
that have been released.

Assumption three is the assumption that the only part of schooling that matters in the end
is academic achievement and that teachers should only be paid based on the success rate of their
class. It hinges on the fact that the United States assumes that standardized test scores
accurately measure student academic achievement and that academic achievement constitutes the
full range of goals we have for students (Gratz 78). However it has been shown that beyond
basic academic skills, corporate leaders have consistently cited the need for critical thinking,
problem solving, teamwork and collaboration, communication skills, and a good work ethic as
the keys to worker success (Gratz 79) of which is not always provided by test scores. One must
understand that when we evaluate teachers, it is very difficult to measure many life skills that are
taught in a class room beyond the lesson plans. Things like citizenship, responsibility, and time
management are often overlooked in the merit based pay system, due to the inability to measure
a students comprehension of these life skills.
So along with these common misconceptions and assumptions about the education
system that must hold true in order for the merit pay program to work, there are also flaws in
quantifying success in academic achievement. In order to create a fair basis for merit pay, there
must be a set criteria for what level of success earns what level of compensation, however this
approach leads to major pitfalls, such as narrowing the curriculum, gaming the system through
teaching to the test, and victimizing struggling students and their families through blame or
worse (Ramirez 56).
Another major problem with merit based pay is the morale problems that can be induced
if you push merit based pay. Teachers are professionals, and deserve to, and wish to be treated as
such, however by forcing them to complete certain objectives in order to earn a higher pay,
teachers often feel demoralized and as if the school system is treating them like laboratory rats

and not professionals (Ramirez 57). Also if an educator were to miss their mark and not make
the money that they desired they may feel as though they are a failure in the eyes of the
schooling system and would thus be less attracted to the concept of merit pay in the future.
Performance pay can, however, also adversely affect not just teachers, but their students
as well. During the interview conducted with Casali, she was questioned about what she
believed the negative effects that merit based pay had on the educational system, to which she
stated The pressure that were under to increase students scores just puts more pressure on
students themselves, and thats not healthy (Kraatz 2). She spoke about how the amount of
pressure that it puts on high school students, as only teenagers, is far too much and that this stress
only becomes more apparent in the younger ages of students in middle and elementary school
(Kraatz 2). By evaluating teachers solely based on their students test scores, it puts the fate of
teachers into the hands of their students, which creates a level of pressure on the students,
because they will feel as though they are responsible for helping their teachers earn enough
money to survive.
As a whole, it genuinely boils down to the never ending debate of if a teacher deserves a
wage increase, how much they deserve, and how one can quantify what they deserve. One must
battle between both logic and morals, to try and decipher exactly how to quantify what a teacher
has earned, and with so many intangibles, it is simply just not an easy thing to do.

Works Cited
Elpus, Kenneth. "Merit Pay and the Music Teacher." Arts Education Policy Review 112.4 (2011): 180-90.
Print.
Gratz, Donald B. "The Problem with Performance Pay." Educational Leadership 67.3 (2009): 76-9. Print.
Haberman, Martin. "Raising Teacher Salaries: The Funds are there." Education 125.3 (2005): 327-42. Print.
Ingersoll, Richard, and Lisa Merrill. "Who's Teaching our Children?" Educational Leadership 67.8 (2010):
14-20. Print.
Johnson, Susan Moore, and John P. Papay. "Merit Pay for a New Generation." Educational Leadership 67.8
(2010): 48-52. Print.
Kelly, Sean. "An Event History Analysis of Teacher Attrition: Salary, Teacher Tracking, and Socially
Disadvantaged Schools." Journal of Experimental Education 72.3 (2004): 195-220. Print.
Morice, Linda C., and James E. Murray. "Compensation and Teacher Retention: A Success Story."
Educational Leadership 60.8 (2003): 40. Print.
RAMIREZ, A. L. "Merit Pay Misfires." Educational Leadership 68.4 (2010): 58-5. Print.
Ujifusa, Andrew. "Plan would Shift $15 Billion in Prison Spending to Teacher Pay." Education Week 35.7
(2015): 14-6. Print.
Casali, Kaitlyn. "Short Assignment 3: Interview." E-mail interview. 2 Mar. 2016.

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