Merit Pay and Tenure

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/education/18teach.html?_r=1&scp=26&sq=education&st=cse

This article was sent to me by a teacher from a public school and the author, Sam Dillon, makes a few good points regarding the topics of merit pay and teacher tenure. In terms of merit pay, Dillon states, "all teachers in a participating school to receive extra pay when that school excels." I am not sure if I agree or disagree with this point. I believe that teachers should have some form of an incentive for excelling in their profession, but I am not sure how schools and administrators should judge if these teachers are excelling. With merit pay, I believe that politics within schools would cause a wave of controversy. Placing students in particular classrooms may turn into a draft. It would allow certain students to be placed in certain teachers classrooms because of their academic ability. This is one of those topics that will always be up for discussion until a better solutions comes to the forefront.

In terms of teacher tenure, there are positives and negatives to the topic. Tenure is necessary in education, but teachers need to be held accountable. Again, I am not sure how you judge if a teacher is being held accountable, but changes need to be made. Maybe solutions to tenure would be to make it more than three years and a day, to six or seven years to earn tenure. Maybe an evaluation by some type of government agency needs to be created to tenure teachers. These are just a few thoughts on two controversial topics. I am interested to hear your thoughts and ideas.