In many states, educators who obtain National Board Certification receive a stipend in addition to their contract-based salary. Incentive pay should be based on a variety of factors - not only student achievement. Does the educator obtain professional development - outside of mandatory system-based offerings? Does the educator participant in school-based committees? Does the educator question system-wide practices, participate in action research, and read research pertinent to their profession? The real question is: Does the education system value this type of educator....or does it value the educator who desires union security and follows administrative decisions regardless of professional knowledge in fear of retribution for thoughtful disagreement? I would appreciate incentive pay if there are checks and balances in place to make certain that rewards are based on merit not friendship.

High-stakes testing has already proved to corrupt and cause cheating. If one enters education to receive pay raises and bonuses one is sadly mistaken. Unity as a group of teachers to increase salaries is fine; using the students as a means of monetary advancement has lost the focus of education: the betterment of a child's abilities. Protecting a teacher due to seniority and not competence is the mistake that is being made.

I totally agree with Meghan. There are to many factors involved. The two most important are the students actions and the parents.

We work very hard in the classroom to teach; then when we put pressure on the students to learn what we are presenting we are called to the office for being to hard on our students.

There are classes all over the United States that have over fifty students and most of those classes have four or five special needs students in them. Be real. How is that teacher supposed to meet all fifty students needs? Hold the teacher responsible and give her more pay? I don't think so! They are not Supermen/women.

How about removing those students from the classroom that won't allow that teacher to teach? Instead of incentive pay, remove those teachers who are not doing their job. Raise the pay of all the other teachers. Help them with discipline. Make sure that all the students speak ENGLISH, so they can understand the teacher and then see what happens in the schools.

Most people believe that teaching is a zero sum growth industry. It's major function is to promote citizenship and an understanding of the technologies facing our nation so that we can be active citizens. You want to tell me how we focus that into an incentive pay system? If we say that we are going to get raises based on student improvement, what measure will we use and how will it be monitored? Does the measure have reliablility that it measures what it says it is going to measure? Is the measure norm referenced and are my students in the representative sample? What standards are the test marketers under, and how can their standards trickle down to the teacher? Perhaps to a district? Then again what are you asking a measure to do? Do we individualize education for our special needs student? Do we permit students with different learning styles?
I want to get into the market and buy shares of pharmacuticals that sell antidepressantss or antipsycotic drugs, it this is a direction we think is going to save American education. I have a friend who is married to a woman who was raised in Russia. She says that we are more regulated that Russia at the height of Communism. How do we want to educate our young? What is our greater purpose? How should children be cared for and what is appropriate learning situations? Should we only look at school as an academic facility or should learning include the trades and manual arts? Is there a one shot way to solve all of education's ills? Is education responsible for all child rearing? Answer some of these and we can talk about merit pay.

YES! All the teachers in my building are very talented but seem to have lost their push and creativity to help kids learn. We are teaching a generation of students who have had everything done FOR them - even thinking. The teachers need to think out of the box to find innovative ways to engage these students. I have worked very hard to help our teaching staff make flashcards, say thing dfferently and tune up their teaching styles. Teachers who take the time to do this need, should be rewarded and more money could always help!

It has been my experience in 31 years of teaching that if you had the ability to improve the students learning and control your class your reward was more students that needed help and more students that were harder to control. Teachers should be rewarded for excellant instruction. The problem is finding someone who can recognize good instruction and is not bias.

I do not feel teachers should be given incentive pay for doing what they are supposed to be doing in the first place. The teaching profession is not easy, no matter where you work. Each of us has obstacles to overcome and challenges to meet. Paying more money to some only devalues the work of others. Furthermore, student improvement is not the result of any single teacher alone. There are a multitude of people responsible for improvement, including parents and teachers from preceding years.

The devil is in the details. Awards based on student achievement alone beg the question. A sixth grade teacher may be recognized for what was learned well in previous grades. A growth model may be a more appropriate model to measure teacher effectiveness, but this still requires considerable data about the potential of each student to grow. The survey question is unanserable as stated.

It is a sad commentary that educating our young citizens should have financial incentive. Do we really believe that teachers become educators for the fabulous salaries? Parents sen dthe best they have to school and teachers do their best to make sure they receive the best education possible. Incentives mask the bigger problem of historically underpaying educators and is perosnally insulting to imply that I would "do a better job" if I were paid more. The national conversation of higher pay for teachers is long overdue.

Incentive pay should be given to all teachers if they remain the entire year in the school environment. Why do I say this? The majority of today's students are disrespectful, badly dressed and do not care about teaching and learning. They feel they should get a grade for just showing up and then just socialize. Teachers are frustrated, the veteran teachers are there because they want to be there and have too much to give up at this point. The new teachers are less likely to deal with disrespect and because their self-discipline is not as developed, steadily grow more and more frustrated and quits.

Additionally, to retain teachers, enforce discipline. Make parents more responsible for the actions of their children and help them to see the need of becoming more involved in the teaching of their children. High school children especially need guidance and discipline from the home. Children who do not have limits at home come to school believing that the authority of the school is not important. Fix this factor and teacher retention will rise.

Another factor that impacts teacher retention is the district and local school administrators attitude toward teachers. Some are down right mean, spiteful and disrespectful of the teaching profession. In addition, there are a lot of reform models that impact the way teachers teach. The reality of what schools do does not meet the expectation of what teachers think should happen and so they QUIT.