Merit Pay

Is it possible in public education?

Currently, teachers receive stipends for "extra" duties or services they perform within a school (being an advisor for a club, managing the school's website, attending extra events or meetings that weren't required by the contract). This is the only form of merit pay that the teacher's union will allow. When I first became a teacher, I was similar to many first year teachers. I was active in just about every aspect of student life. I wanted to be a part of how the school worked, get to know the students, and just in general, be involved. I thought that if the students got to know me, and see how important I felt their experiences were, they would benefit in some way. I was right. On the whole, students respond much better to teachers who are more involved in student life, and teachers who they see as allies for their causes. Now, as a beginning teacher, I didn't feel the need to receive a stipend for every little thing I did. Granted, I tended to go a little bit overboard (hence the move into administration), but I still didn't feel like I couldn't do these activities if I wasn't receiving money based on pressure from my colleagues.

One day, when another teacher noticed that I had created my own classroom website, and was about to create a website for the school, she approached me with her grave concerns. She told me, "You'd better be getting a stipend for all this web stuff! Next thing you know, we're all going to be required to have a website, and no one's going to be paid for it."

The question remains, how can you ask teachers to do anything that is above and beyond the contract without giving them a stipend of some kind? Can you? Should you? The teacher's contract is more about minimum, not about maximum, but is so often treated as the maximum. Teachers are still paid on a salary, not by the hour, right?