Merit Pay for Teachers

I see that Gov. Pete Wilson is seeking merit pay for teachers (Part A, Dec. 22). As a teacher, I agree with him when he argues that there is little accountability in the field, which makes it difficult to measure a teacher’s performance. I also agree that student test scores should be one standard of measuring a teacher’s performance.

Viewing merit pay as a solution to the problem of declining student achievement serves to blame only the teachers and to ignore the complex social issues that contribute to poor student performance.

To evaluate teachers, Wilson proposes a new student testing program. He asserts that “it is not beyond the capacity of intelligent men and women to devise a fair test.” This is good news! Certainly any test, to be fair, will account for the sixth-grader, new to this country, who cannot speak, read or write the English language. I’m sure it will also consider the first-grader who comes to school never having been exposed to a book, much less the alphabet. This test will consider the fourth-grader who can’t concentrate on her reading lesson because she’s waiting for her free lunch, the only meal she’ll eat that day, and it will factor in the teen-ager who has just moved into his seventh foster home in the last six months. Will this test measure the performance of many students, like my own, who are in special education programs due to serious academic deficits?

It’s possible that when a test is devised that takes all these factors into account, that the vast majority of teachers will be found deserving of merit pay. Teachers don’t need to be bribed to do their job; it’s simplistic to suggest that the current state of education is entirely their fault. More realistically it may be the consequence of a society that places no real value on its children.

LYNN G. HUBBELL, Grover City