...Teacher Merit Pay Systems No matter how smart the student is, the efforts and quality of the school they are in, and the efforts and quality of the teacher that is instructing them has a very large influence on how well they will produce in school. If these factors have such a large influence on children’s ability to perform on standardized and non-standardized tests, both teachers and schools should be properly devoted to the children. This is where the idea of merit pay systems comes in. Merit pay systems reward the teachers with salary raises and reward schools with increased funds when their students do well or significantly improve. This process is made to encourage teachers to bring out the best in their students, and when they are properly influenced, it would seem that good results would be produced. The problem with merit pay systems in today’s schools, is that no one has found a “one size fits all” model for a merit pay system. Some systems have had success in some regions, while similar systems have failed in other regions. Merit systems have not worked in the past as well as they should have, this research paper will identify the failed programs, the problems behind those failed programs, the correct way to execute a merit pay system, and what the intended results can be if merit pay systems work to perfection. One of the first merit pay systems came about when British educators realized they needed to change the education system to yield better results. In his...
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...Running head: ACTION INQUIRY RESEARCH PAPER- MERIT PAY Action Inquiry Research Paper- School Finance Jennifer Ponton Grand Canyon EDA 535 July 01, 2012 Action Inquiry Research Paper- School Finance Statement of the Problem This past spring thousands of teachers protested at the Louisiana State Capital to prevent Louisiana lawmakers from passing an educational reform bill proposed by Governor Bobby Jindall that would change the face of public education in Louisiana forever. Many superintendents and school personnel were relieved of their professional responsibilities on the days they protested hoping that they could sway the governor and the lawmakers from passing the bill. The bill was passed even without the support of many educational leaders and lawmakers in Louisiana. The laws passed by Louisiana lawmakers read like a conservative education reformer’s wish list. Teacher tenure in Louisiana after three years of employment was eliminated and replaced with teachers receiving a “highly effective rating for five out of six consecutive years of teaching. Back to back “ineffective rating will result in a teacher being fired. Seniority will no longer be a dominant factor in layoff decisions. In fact most decisions involving teacher employment and pay will now be the responsibility of both the principal and the superintendent of school. Before Governor Jindall’s reform plan it was the responsibility of the local school board. The reform proposed by the governor...
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...Institution: Performance pay also called merit pay can be defined as a system that remunerates its employees in relation to an assessment of individual performance and how well one works. Such systems basically are meant to align employees’ individual effort to the goals and objectives of the organization. Hence it is a reward to individual employees whose tasks have been considered to be above the set standards of an organization or above average. In cases and situations where the output produced or sales produced by an employee are hard or difficult to be empirically determined, performance pay is most applicable; for examples in the teaching profession. In cases of performance payment, individual performance is usually reviewed regularly through a process called performance appraisal. Performance appraisal helps in establishing and identifying if the set objectives and standards are in line with the performance results. Generally, performance pay is usually rewarded on basis of performance results rather than on the time worked, (Council, 2011). Performance pay for teachers has been quite a subject of contention in many places and especially in the USA. Performance pay is meant to compensate teachers based on a set of performance standard and does not consider a teacher’s level of education or the level of experience gained. Hence, the more outstanding results a teacher produces from the students, the more the teacher is to be paid. Merit pay does not necessarily come...
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...union workers through collective bargaining. One of the biggest union forces in the United States is the teachers union. With almost close to 5 million members nationwide, the teachers union is one of the most powerful unions. Through collective bargaining, problems have been created for the public school system which takes place at local school districts; rules have been imposed to create ineffective forms of organization at schools. The rules that are currently in place by collective bargaining are also creating a big disconnection with many public schools, that being the interest of the children. The teachers union is one main role players that is behind the organized education system of the United States. So, why are the public schools systems in the United States failing? The answer can be complicated a one, one of the reasons why the public school system is broken is due to the collective bargaining through the teachers union. Collective bargaining has made great impact on student achievement, as a result, the teacher unions have often used their political power to block or weaken major education reform efforts, efforts that would expand school choice for many students and parents. School districts that engage in collective bargaining only promote job interest for teachers. The collective bargaining with teachers union does not promote an effective way for students to succeed in the classroom. Teachers are the most important people in children’s lives, their role is significant...
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...Effects of Merit Pay on Job Satisfaction I should start out by mentioning the fact that no employee at the school corporation that I work for has received a raise in the last five years. Recently the school corporation has decided to give everyone a merit raise based on the previous year’s performance evaluation instead of employee tenure. I have heard many employees carrying on conversations with other staff members about how upset they are that the raise is based on past performance instead of how long they have been employed at the school corporation. This had led me to want to discover how merit pay affects a teacher’s job satisfaction. I am not a teacher however, I am the schools registrar and I will also receive my raise based on my previous year’s performance evaluation. It has always been my past experience that typically raises are based on performance no matter where I have worked. Using Evidence-based Human Resource as presented by Rousseau and Barends (2011) I will attempt to present my findings on how merit pay affects a teacher’s job satisfaction. Summary of Rousseau and Barends (2011) Article The article by Rousseau and Barends (2011), presents us with an overview of the decision-making process called Evidence-based Human Resource (EBHR). “EBHR is a decision-making process combining critical thinking with use of the best available scientific evidence and business information” (Rousseau & Barends, 2011). Rousseau and Barends (2011), maintain that Human...
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...Problems in Performance Measurement at the Edwards School of Business Table of Content Executive summary 3 1. Introduction 4 2. Discussion 5 2.1 Problems with performance measurement 5 2.2 Factors that cause problems 6 2.3 Prediction of other institutions 8 3. Conclusion 10 4. References 11 Executive summary This report is a case study from Edward School of Business to analyze the problems in performance measurement. The point-based merit system is introduced for the purpose of improving faculty members’ performance in academic research when keeping good performance in teaching and motoring students. The reports will first give a general background of Edwards School of Business and the merit system. It then presents three specific problems that the school encounters, namely faculty members focusing too much on getting points rather than improving outputs, unfairness due to quantifying performance into points and confusions and distrust from faculty members. Besides, how these problems generate is discussed and prediction of results in other organizations is discussed. Introduction Edwards School of Business is the second largest college of The University of Saskatchewan, enrolling about 2,000 students every year. It is now undergoing institutional transformation to enhance academic research, the student experience and faculty engagement. To support the transformation, a new human resource strategy, the merit system, is made to set standards of performance measuring. It is a...
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...Evolution – Merit Based Pay for Teachers Today the issue regarding merit based pay for teachers is getting more and more heated, and more discussions are actively being done in various places. The crocs of this debate are regarding whether merit based pay is an effective way of boosting the quality of public education: depending on the effectiveness and the backlashes of the policy, it is time that we should make a clear choice. And at this moment, it is right to go for and adopt the merit based pay policy. The pivotal part of merit based pay is that teachers with different capacities in terms of teaching should get different pay. It is a logical thing that we pay more to the best teachers, and pay less in comparison to those who perform poor to others. If we institute this policy, there will be innumerous benefits, and these will outweigh any potential harm. The first and the foremost advantage of this policy is that it helps students. Students are educated by their teachers. When we implement the policy of merit based pay, more teachers will work hard to get better grades in teacher’s evaluation. Because the teachers are strongly incentivized to work harder in hand of pay, students will naturally be provided with higher quality education. A prestigious research organization, known as the RAND corporation, conducted a research where teachers within a group were given merit based pay and the other controlled group was not. The study revealed that the students in the first...
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...The concept of pay performance is attractive to the public sector because its basis is rooted in the perception that superior performance should be acknowledged and rewarded. Its implementation is varied, consisting of individuals, work groups, or departments being evaluated and having financial incentives distributed as base pay increases, one-time bonuses, or a combination. “Merit pay” is a term typically associated with pay for performance where individual performance ratings are directly correlated to annual salary increases in hopes that the incentive with increase employee effort and productivity. However, the critical component that directly affects success with this pay structure is employee perception on how equitable and attainable the expectations are within the incentive plan. Employees form beliefs and take actions based on how satisfied they are with their jobs as well as an opinion about state agencies as places to work and pursue careers. If these employees feel that the performance appraisal systems are not fair, then they will not be motivated by the premise of linking their pay to incentives. Moreover, these same employees will eventually become disgruntle and work at less productive rates because they feel as though “politics” or favoritism determines the outcome of their evaluations not personal achievement. Many employees were attracted to public sector jobs because of they were perceived to be secure with good benefits. Now, public agencies are moving...
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...plan to keep the act intact but with their own revisions, and both parties stress the importance of every child receiving what they call a “world-class education. (Internation Reading Association: Reading Today: McCain vs. Obama)McCain’s key concept in changing the No Child Left Behind Act, is giving parents and their children the choice of any school through charter schools, vouchers, or tax credits for private schools, while Obama’s main focus is recruiting new teachers and paying them higher salaries; I believe Obama’s plan to reform the No Child Left Behind Act is a more productive plan, and that he has a better approach to reforming the No Child Left Behind Act. The No Child Left Behind Act, NCLB, was introduced on January 23, 2001, immediately after George Bush stepped into office. This act requires all public schools to provide a state-wide standardized test yearly to every student. Schools receiving funding must make a progress in tests scores every year. If schools fail to do so, they are published in their town’s local news paper as “failing schools,” and parents have the option to transfer their children to another school. According to the National Assessment of Educational...
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...The impact of the 7 day Chicago Public School teacher strike is a complex problem for each stakeholder. City officials, principals, teachers, parents and children all voice their frustrations and positions regarding the teacher strike. The strike was positioned as Emanuel vs. Lewis, but Lewis was contending with a union that installed her in order to take a more active stance and Emanuel’s plan, at least from publicly, was similarly aggressive. Inevitably, Emanuel and Lewis would meet. Consensus is that the CTU won, but Lewis admits that the actual contractual gains are unsatisfactory to her and the union. CTU came through over two decades of insufficiently strong (for the membership's desires) leadership, and Lewis took over after a major power shift. The teachers union expect that in the course of a couple of years that the union would change its internal stance and that by electing a competent head achieve all its goals in an anti-union environment during a period of austerity, all while contending with a figure like Rahm Emanuel. CTU positioned itself for future battles, such as school closings, and fighting attempts of the mayor to eliminate unions, close to up 120 and open charter schools with non-unionized teachers. Delegates for the Chicago Teachers Union filed a 10 day strike notice on August 29, 2012 and the strike was official Monday, September 10, 2012. Now, one week after the new school year start the city experienced its first...
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...Academic essay Universally, it is almost an obligation for every government to ensure that its citizens have access to education. However, despite this expectation, the ability to have access to education in different parts of the world is still difficult. It is essential to promote education so as to enhance equal attainment of opportunities. The right to education has been influenced by a number of policies, globally; the right to education is spelt out in chapter 26 in the Universal Human Right Declaration. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights also elaborates on the need for global education. In a nutshell, education can be used in any county to promote equality in accessing different opportunities. For instance, taking a look on imperialism days, the whites were using education as a tool to acquire more opportunities than the black. They believed that it was through education that the blacks would be in opposition to oppose them. This is because they would be enlightened and hence demand for equality (Douglas, 1845). Precisely, the purpose of this essay is to discuss how access to education is significant in enhancing equality of opportunity in the current Australia. The discussion begins by describing the role that education and training has in our society today. Furthermore, the discussion will outline different social groups and the way different factors influence the way they get access to education in different forms. This paper also explores...
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...legislature passed sweeping changes to public education in order to give more control to local school districts. Many of which affected teachers directly. The General Assembly, which is controlled by Republicans, ended teacher tenure, halted a salary increase to those with a master’s degree, and eliminated a cap on class size. No state has seen a more drastic decrease in teacher salary ranking in the past 10 years. Teacher tenure has been replaced by a merit-based system that rewards long-term contracts to the top 25% of teachers and shorter contracts to the rest. Because of this, teacher morale is down. At this point, teachers are questioning whether they want to teach, especially in North Carolina. They are having a hard time taking care of their families. Right now, there are educators who qualify for government assistance. It used to be that teachers with a master’s degree would get an increase in pay, but not anymore. There has been a halt on these increases. This goes back to merit pay; they have to prove themselves. Teachers are no longer limited to a particular class size. Now there is no cap. So a teacher may have to teach an unlimited number of students in a classroom; it no longer matters the size. Because North Carolina is a right-to-work state, teachers are prohibited from collective bargaining or going on strike. But they have fought back anyway. They marched on the state Capitol and staged a walk-in before the school day. They are also pressuring the Governor...
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...Psychology Term Paper By James Bishop Instructor: William Lucht Rachel Carson Elementary School, a subsystem of the Montgomery County Public Schools, was built in 1990. The goals of the school are to maintain the proper education for its students. Rachel Carson provides the setting for my examination of various organizational theories. The theories under examination are McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y and Weber’s Bureaucratic Theory. McGregor’s Theory X assumes that people are basically lazy and need to be coerced into performing effectively. I illustrated this by comparing the teachers to management (these are the individuals who give rewards and recognition to get students to work). I also compared the pupils to workers (individuals needing coercion to fulfill expectations). McGregor’s Theory Y assumes that individuals seek autonomy. This theory is best depicted by Rachel Carson’s administration and its teachers. Teachers are allowed to manage their classrooms with minimal administration intervention. Weber’s Bureaucratic Theory believes organizations should function like machines using the concept of bureaucracy. This concept was best depicted by the entire Rachel Carson staff and how it abides by the rules set forth by the Montgomery County Public Schools. Montgomery County Public School System was established in the early nineteenth century. The goals of education for the school system were adored in 1958. Since then, the goals have been modified on two occasions...
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...private benefit, there are the marginal social cost and marginal social benefit, which are external. As a result, governments must find responses to try to solve these market failures. 2. Externalities are the effects of market activities on other people that are external to the market. They are either positive externalities or negative externalities. When the social benefit of a good equates the social cost, it is known as the social optimum. Goods that have large positive externalities can either be public goods or merit goods. Public goods are non-rivalrous and non-excludable, while private goods, such as a merit good, are rivalrous and excludable. When a good has large positive externalities, the government should support its production. When a good has large negative externalities (demerit good), the government should limit or stop its production and consumption. Markets can fail in regard to externalities in four ways: lack of public goods, under provision of merit goods, over provision of demerit goods, and environmental degradation. Graph 1 demonstrating MPB and MPC to the individuals participating in the market. Graph 2 demonstrating positive externalities, when the social benefit is added to the private benefits. This means that...
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...Year | CATEGORIES/ Other Awards | Winner/Merit Awardee | Awardees | Name of Project | Country | 2003 | Environmental Excellence | Winner | Nestle Philippines | Greening The Supply Chain | Philippines | | | Merit Awardee | Unilever Indonesia | The Sustainable Clean Brantas River Program | Indonesia | | | Merit Awardee | Mass Transit Railway Corporation | Sustainability Report 2001 & 2002 | Hong Kong | | Support & Improvement of Education | Winner | Tat Consultancy Services | Adult Literacy Program | India | | | Merit Awardee | Coca Cola Foundation, Inc. | Creative Writing Workshop on Children’s Books | Philippines | | | Merit Awardee | Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank Corp. Phils. (HSBC) | Model of Excellence School in Esteban Abada | Philippines | | Best CSR Policies | Winner | Union Cement Corporation | Union Social Development and Management Program | Philippines | | | Merit Awardee | Unocal Thailand | The Social Responsibility Ambassadors Program | Thailand | | | Merit Awardee | Central Azucarera Don Pedro | The Community Development Program | Philippines | | Poverty Alleviation | Winner | Hindalco Industries | Integrated Rural Poverty Alleviation Program | India | | | Merit Awardee | Allen & Overy | Supporting “Helpers from Domestic Helpers” | Hong Kong | | | Merit Awardee | Seylan Bank | Comprehensive Microfinance for Micro-sector Empowerment | Sri Lank | | Special Achievement Award | Winner | Philippine Business...
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