Merit pay for teachers

Merit pay for teachers is a controversial subject that can lead to heated arguments.  Unions think the idea of merit pay is unfair to teachers and too difficult to implement equitably.  But is there a way to implement merit pay fairly for teachers?  According to Bobby Anne Starnes, out of all of the talk about education reform, teacher merit pay should not be the highest on the list.  She relates education reform through teacher merit pay to blaming tellers for the banking industries failures. (http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.nl.edu/ehost/pdf?vid=3&hid=105&sid=f6bcbf43-bf62-4fa3-a69e-6eb5972e24ca%40sessionmgr102)  "Of all the actors in schools and schooling, of all the people in the hierarchy, are teachers the ones who should be singled out?  They, who are never included in making decisions about how schools operate?"  I find this quote to be quite true.  The people in charge of administrative decisions have rarely ever been in the classroom or have been so far removed from the classroom, they have no clue what it is like to be in the front lines of teaching.  

So will implementing merit based pay increase student performance?  Because that is really what merit pay is all about.  It is not about teacher performance but it is all about increasing students' test scores.  Teachers do not enter the profession thinking they will become wealthy.  I have never heard a teacher say they would work harder or teach better if they were payed more.  If pay for teachers is tied to performance on standardized testing, how are teachers evaluated that teach subjects that do not get tested such as physical education, music, art, and sometimes even social studies?  In an article in The Washington Post, Jay Matthews worries that with an individual pay-for-performance, it becomes every teacher for herself or himself.  Teachers lose the sense of team work if they think every little thing they do is going to affect their salary.  

Most teachers I know work hard to give their students a great education.  They are not in it for the money.  They come to work early and they leave well after they are off the clock.  Would merit pay really change them into even better teachers?  I do not think it would have any affect on their teaching performance.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/31/AR2009053102236.html?hpid=sec-education