Will Wichita Schools Consider Merit Pay?

by Bob Weeks on September 18, 2008

The St. Petersburg Times reports on some finding from a study of teacher merit pay in Florida.

The result? From the article Teachers’ income doesn’t reflect results: “The findings, in fact, suggest that quality has little to do with how schools pay the 30,000 teachers in the Tampa Bay area. What rules the day is not how well students do, but how long a teacher has stuck around and how much education he or she has.”

This study confirms what many others have found: It is the qualifications of the teacher that make the difference in student learning. Experience and educational credentials matter much less.

Most school districts, including Wichita’s USD 259, base teacher pay solely on length of service and education. It’s right in the union contract.

Reforms like teacher merit pay are reforms that the teachers unions fight. It’s an indication of the true concern of the union: teachers before students.

As Wichita considers a bond issue, a large part of which is to build new classrooms to support smaller class sizes, consider this: Assuming the best-qualified teacher are hired first (and that’s a presumption that may very well not be true), the new teachers hired to support smaller class sizes will be the least-qualified. This means that more children will be taught by less-qualified teachers.

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Government is essentially the negation of liberty. — Ludwig von Mises
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Your principle has placed these words above the entrance of the legislative chamber: “whosoever acquires any influence here can obtain his share of legal plunder.” And what has been the result? All classes have flung themselves upon the doors of the chamber crying: “A share of the plunder for me, for me!” — Frederic Bastiat
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Barbra Streisand told Diane Sawyer that we're in a global warming crisis, and we can expect more and more intense storms, droughts and dust bowls. But before they act, weather experts say they're still waiting to hear from Celine Dion. — Jay Leno
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Increasingly, it seems that the biggest difference between conservatives and liberals is that the conservatives know government is force. But that doesn't stop them from using it. — John Stossel
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Late one night in Washington, D.C. a mugger wearing a ski mask jumped into the path of a well-dressed man and stuck a gun in his ribs. "Give me your money!" he demanded. Indignant, the affluent man replied, "You can't do this. I'm a United States Congressman!" "In that case," replied the robber, "give me my money!" — Related by Walter Block
The libertarian creed, finally, offers the fulfillment of the best of the American past along with the promise of a far better future. Even more than conservatives, who are often attached to the monarchical traditions of a happily obsolete European past, libertarians are squarely in the great classical liberal tradition that built the United States and bestowed on us the American heritage of individual liberty, a peaceful foreign policy, minimal government, and a free-market economy. Libertarians are the only genuine current heirs of Jefferson, Paine, Jackson, and the abolitionists. — From "For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto" by Murray N. Rothbard
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And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
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And then they came for the Jews,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then ... they came for me ...
And by that time there was no one left to speak up. — Pastor Martin Niemöller
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