I don’t often find myself agreeing with Sydney talkback radio host Alan Jones… I generally find him brash and arrogant, full of sweeping statements that irk me no end, but this piece from his regular video editorial actually makes sense…
The key thing about it is that teachers who are only in teaching for the money really are in it for the wrong reasons. Of course, having said that, I think it pretty reasonable that teachers ought to be paid in comparable terms to the many other professions out there that do work which contributes far less to the greater good of the world and yet get paid far more. I know that there are probably a few paycheck-driven teachers with 8:00 to 3:00 mentalities, just as there are in every occupation, but as a whole I have never known a more hardworking group of people than teachers.
Merit pay sounds like a good idea to me, as long as we can agree on what sorts of things count as being meritorious.
Merit Pay for Teachers by Chris Betcher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.