Teachers salaries should be based on their students academic performance Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the claim In developing and supporting your position be sure to address the most compelling reaso

Teachers play a fundamental role in modern societies, as they are responsible for preparing the next generation of citizens, professionals, and politicians. As it happens in any other job, overall compensation should be provided in accordance with a professional’s ability to achieve certain pre-established milestones. When it comes to teaching, it should be no different and the same principle ought to be applied. In my perspective, it is crucial to take into account the overall academic performance of students as the main evaluation criterium used to assess a teacher’s salary due to three main reasons.

To begin with, every organization requires tangible criteria in order to properly evaluate its employees and thus, schools need to create a concrete metric that would provide a fair evaluation of its teachers. According to the renowned Brazilian educator Ary de Sá, professors’ performance should be evaluated on two main criteria: number of hours worked, and students’ performance; the latter being the most important one. Ary, who created several educational institutions throughout Brazil, states that a successful company is only able to operate at its full potential when it manages to properly evaluate the performance of its staff. After hiring several foreign consultants to conduct a painstaking research in order to access the most efficient evaluation criteria to be implemented, Ary found out that relating students’ performance to staffs’ compensation would contribute the most to its business operation, and hence, it should also be the main practice adopted by any school.

Secondly, creating pre-established criteria for remuneration ought to incentivize employees to maximize their effort and productivity at work. One of the most prominent researchers of modern organizations, Henry Mintzberg advocates that financial incentive is the most efficient tool to drive employees and employers towards a common goal. According to the academic, 70% of the companies that established properly delimited milestones and goals to its employees managed to increase their profits at exorbitant rates compared to those of other organizations which did not adhere to such practice. Furthermore, during a conference held in 2005, Microsoft’s founder William Gates Jr. stated that the main catalyst for the company’s early financial success was the financial incentives - such as stock options and warrants – issued to its top-tiered employees, as a way of promoting a culture of excellence and hard-work within the company. When it comes to education, the same outcome ought to be observed. Establishing educators’ overall compensation in accordance with student’s performance should result in the maximization of teachers’ efficiency, eventually leading to better educational services provided.

It is also of common belief, on the other hand, that education cannot be defined as a practice of merely incentivizing students to attain to high grades. Proponents of this view often advocate that education embraces a plethora of different fields other than merely the taut of scientific concepts. Such fields include the bolster for students to have empathy and respect for others; to have environmental consciousness; among others. Nevertheless, as mentioned previously, a tangible evaluation metric must be created to assess the proper compensation of teachers and, even though a student who managed to get a high grade in a certain subject might not be a fully educated person yet (in case she did not manage to develop herself in the other fields cited), chances are that the professor has been doing a great job in educating her student.

Conclusively, even though education plays a major role in the overall development of the human being, and incentivizing students to achieve high grades should not be the main priority of this noble activity, by establishing concrete compensation parameters, such as basing the teacher’s salaries on their students’ academic performance, schools would successfully manage to provide better education to its pupils and to operate at its full potential.