In my school, the administration’s desire to implement merit pay is not only an attempt to repress salary expenses and to weed out incompetent or “stale” teachers, but also to pit teachers against one another. Who will share lessons, teaching ideas, assessments if the other guy might get the credit? I created most of the lessons, exercises, and exams for our 10th grade course that the other teachers use, yet admin has no idea that the other teachers depend on my work. If I were to say so, it would make me look small, and administration would not much care as my colleagues are popular teachers. I believe that teachers ought to work together to create the best classes and the highest standards. Yet merit pay stifles cooperation and rewards self-promotion and potentially sycophancy.

Perhaps all other professionals and workers contend with the same workplace pressures and dynamics, but many are paid significantly more to do so. My husband works for a Fortune 500 Company and might lose his job at any moment if he under performs, but his corporate management provides support and feedback that most schools do not–full-time managers who oversee 5 or 6 reports, administrative assistants, extensive yearly reviews, etc.

Tenure (which ought only to be awarded after fair and rigorous process) allows a teacher to concentrate on her class, voice her opinions without fear of reprisal, and to collaborate with other teachers. We seem to have forgotten that a major reason for tenure was to protect teachers from possible misuses of administrative power.

http://hisstoryisbunk.blogspot.com/2012/09/upon-further-review.html

The irony is that it’s not necessary to force standards and accountability on independent, i.e. charters, private, parochial, schools. As an inevitable function of competition standards will arise.

Even in the presence of the dominant institution, the district-based public education system, informal standards have arisen. They’re rough standards and barely merit the use of the word “standards” since they consist of nothing more then dissatisfaction with the district schools and the comparison inherent to the decision to enroll your child in any of the alternatives but that’s a standard nonetheless.