Teachers, paid for teaching

According to an article in the New York Times, a recent vote in Denver, Colorado may be the first step to solidifying the focus on education.

"In March, Denver’s teachers became the first in a major city to approve, by a 59 percent majority, a full-scale overhaul of the salary structure to allow "pay for performance," a controversial approach that rewards teachers for the progress of their students."

Personally, I believe this to be one of the most significant decisions to be made in the benefit of the education system. Far too often over my years, both in grade school and college, I have seen teachers that didn’t care enough to assist the students in learning the materials that they need to learn.

Granted, there are occasions where students either fail to exert themselves, or struggle incredibly with the material, but the role of a teacher is still to teach. Somewhere along the line, or so it seems to me, teachers have fallen more to the tendency of putting a letter on a paper and a check in their pockets, turning students away without the education the need and deserve.

By issuing salary based on the success or failure rate that an educator has, it offers a far better opportunity for the students to learn, since those teachers that are more interested in a paycheck than passing on the gift of knowledge will have less incentive to fumble their way through each school year and slide students through on half-hearted effort. (Yes, there may be some unethical individuals who will try to pad their wallet by padding their student’s success rates with unearned grades, but peer-monitoring within the teaching profession will weed them out).

I can only imagine what portion of his paycheck one of my instructors would have received for a shoddy 18 out of 43 (42%) failure rate.