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

Students’ academic performance may be an element to take into account when remunerating a teacher. Nevertheless, it cannot be the only aspect to considerate as several factors influence scholars’ grades. These may not be related to professor teaching capabilities, such as school’ resources and endowments and the environment in which a student lives and grows. In addition, teachers’ compensations could be based also on non-performance factors, namely, the working commitment or the students’ happiness of the teaching method.

External factors, independent from the teacher’s behaviour, can influence the learning phase of scholars either in a positive or negative way, impacting their academic performance. Hence, one may doubt whether professors’ wages should be anchored to this parameter. This idea can be more easily visualised if we think about school inhomogeneity among mainly white and black’s neighbourhoods in United States. Undoubtedly, the former is characterised by schools that have more teaching resources - compared to the latter - as digital whiteboards in classrooms, laboratories where scholars can conduct experiments and a plenty of sport fields where they can practice and improve athletic skills. Furthermore, growing in a well-off family lessen the difficulty to overcome mayor life’s obstacles. This is since living in a wealthy family allows, for instance, a child to not worry about economic issues and to focus on his education and future. It gives him the access to every opportunity.
Since in US black’s families are statistically poorer than white’s, the first category of students may excel more than the second one, given the same level of teachers’ instructions and teaching skills.

Moreover, one may think that other aspects, in addition to the potentially biased academic performance, should be taken into account, when computing teacher’s salaries, in order to establish a fair evaluation. The higher effort of a teacher could be rewarded with a more consistent wage. Actually, a professor that tries her best to teach scholars and that is able to turn on their curiosity and interest should be remunerated with a greater salary. Accordingly, receiving a fixed amount of cash each month, independently by the progression of students, could incentivised teachers to work passively, making the minimum effort. In addition, another interesting measure of teachers’ salary could be the happiness of students, related to the teaching performance of professors. The application of this idea could attribute to students a consistent power position as their opinion would influence the monthly monetary amount that professors receive. It could seem as a form of coercion/blackmail, even though it would guarantee the non-existence of improper behaviours from the teaching faculty.

A legitimate objection to what has been stated in the previous paragraph is that these two aspects are difficult to measure and thus to use concretely in the computation of wages. As a consequence, an opponent could argue that the only available measure - even if it lacks perfection - is the academic performance. That is since the two additional measurements are qualitative, whereas the former is a quantitative tool, which is obtained from examinations. Notwithstanding, it could be possible to convert qualitative aspects into quantitative data, through specific evaluation tests, which could determine a happiness-teaching index and a commitment index. The former could be evaluated by students, while the latter could be produced by the analysis of an external supervisor.

Summing up, teachers’ salaries should be influenced not only by academic performance - since it may be biased - but also but other factors which consider the students’ opinion of professors and the real efforts engaged by teachers.