PrintApril 15, 2011
Merit Pay for Teachers Works and the Evidence Now Proves It
The idea that any business would pay employees based simply on time served, rather than on the quality of work performed, is economically daffy on its face. It is as offensive on economic grounds as it is on philosophic ones. On economic grounds, it obviously leads to a severe case of the agency problem: by giving people no incentive to perform quality work, they (the agents) will likely fail to deliver a quality service to the principals (the people for whose benefit the agents are supposed to work). On philosophic grounds, it violates the meritorian principle of social justice -- namely, that those who have more merit (work harder, more productively, and more diligently) should be rewarded more than those with less merit. But the special interests who control the American public education business (i.e., education bureaucrats, administrators, and teachers) view education as not a business at all, but instead a magical realm of "public service" immune to all the...(Read Full Article)
