Teachers salaries should be based on their students academic performance

Education, as defined by John Dewey, is the process of learning and acquiring knowledge, beliefs, values and habits. The role of a teacher is to facilitate this holistic process, and the students have the responsibility to absorb this learning in the most efficient way. The author’s recommendation that teachers’ salaries must be based on academic performance of students is unwise because it unfairly places the whole onus of educating students on teacher’s shoulder while overlooking the responsibility of the students.

Foremost, relating teacher’s salary with student performance is irrational and impractical. For students, performance is a function of their attitude, intelligence, academic level and hard-work more than the abilities or methods of the teacher. Any classroom has a spectrum of excellent, mediocre, dull, lazy and hardworking students. When teachers will be paid upon the performance of such students, the net pay would be average; neither such a move will result in pay increment nor provide motivation to teachers. Moreover, high school students have better sense of responsibility towards self-study than kindergarten ones. Therefore, kindergarten teachers will always be disadvantaged no matter how hard they work. Such a system will also serve to negate the importance of teacher’s seniority, experience, and qualifications as higher pay wills always be subjected to students’ performance. A possible scenario of junior teachers getting higher salaries would vitiate the school ambience by creating animosities and bitterness between teachers, thus threatening the overall school performance. Further, the administrative burden to calculate variable salary for every teacher will be cumbersome.

Moreover, with a policy to proportionate teachers’ salary on student performance, the exams will be conducted with a purpose to hold teachers accountable rather than students; this may prompt the former to either teach to test students or simply cheat. Teachers may be forced to narrow down focus on quantifiable results getting rid of the general education portions and practices. Discussions with Mathematics professors on use of applied Mathematics in computers, helping students to overcome public speaking anxiety and other nuances that help students to foster soft and transferable skills would be the things of the past. Alternatively, teachers may encourage students to adopt unfair means to score high in exams thus fetching them higher payments. It may also force borderline unethical practices such as sharing notes remarkably similar to exam questions, condensing down the subject to impart exam oriented teaching, grade inflation and so on.

Yet, teachers have the accountability for their merit and efforts they put in class behind every students. The rational way to assess teachers’ credentials is to holistically evaluate their subject knowledge, teaching and communication skills by invoking student and third party feedback. Similarly, their commitment can be appraised by soliciting students’ opinion on teaching parameters such as punctuality, discussions, co-operation, specialized approach for needy students, etc. to hold them accountable. Moreover, the academic performance of the students must be assessed regularly and teachers must be given additional incentives for successful students apart from a definite fixed pay, thereby, ensuring equality in salary, improved teaching quality and a better education system.

In conclusion, the proposition to base teachers’ salary on merely the academic performance of students is both unrealistic and unfair, as academic performance is subjective and always a function of student efforts besides teaching methodology. Such a policy would prove counterproductive as it will render the learning process into the exam preparation one - that too often associated with unfair practices. The better way to ensure quality education would be to offer extra incentives to teachers for students’ overall success while maintaining their accountability by regularly invoking student feedback on different teaching parameters.