Their was an interesting article in Time I read recently.  It stated that many schools are beginning to think that paying teachers merit pay will make them better teachers.  Schools are going to reward good teachers and in my opinion punish the teachers that are not living up to their standards.  In the article it asked how does one measure merit?  Is it by the amount of students that pass a standardized test?  Is this a fair measure of the teacher and their ability or do schools need to go deeper?  I believe that we need to go deeper.  I know it sounds good to say we are all life learners and we all must continue our education, but how many of us actually do it?  I think it would be interesting to find out in schools the percentage of teachers that have gone back for classes or a second masters.  Possibly these are the teachers that should receive the merit pay, the ones continuing their education to make themselves better.

If schools want to measure teachers is it then not the responsibility of the school to help the teachers that do not fall within their acceptable level of achievement?  Instead of looking to get rid of a teacher would it not benefit a school to keep the teacher and invest in them much as we are expected to invest in our students.  I believe that schools need to recognize that they have a wealth of experience, caring, and dedicated teachers right under their roofs.