Response:
The profession of teaching has been notoriously underpaid in many parts of the nation for many years. Many times, teachers coming out straight of college, tens of thousands of dollars in debt, are put in roles that make just above the poverty line. To base a teachers performance on student academic performance would be an inappropriate move by the school system. This would put not only these new teachers in an even worse situation but even more ‘tenured’ teachers that do not have the ability to improve student academic performances through their own effort.

One of the most recent and glaring problems that would make this idea unfair is the COVID-19 pandemic. Studies have shown that student grades have declined in the past year due to the challenges associated with switching to online learning. Many of these challenges are not necessarily through the fault of the teacher. Students have had a hard time possessing the right amount of self-discipline to stay motivated and focused on their schoolwork while they are surrounded by constant distractions such as video games, family members, and YouTube. Right now, during a pandemic, is not a time to decrease a teacher’s salary due to circumstances that they do not necessarily have control of.

Additionally, a teacher may just have a class that has not been academically conditioned like others. Maybe the teacher before them had failed to adequately prepare them for the rigors of the next teacher? This would leave the receiving teacher at a massive disadvantage because much time would have to be spent bring these students up to speed with the things that they needed to know already instead of teaching what the curriculum intended.

Some who would support this idea would say that it would incentivize teachers to work harder for their students but in reality, it would incentivize teachers to ‘plush’ up student grades. Most teachers would be tempted to do this in order to gain a bigger paycheck. Even teachers that would not do this to their student grades at first, they would likely do so later due to gaining less money comparatively to the ones who did. This would make getting good grades much easier for students and would diminish what students are learning in school causing phenomenon known as a grade inflation. Due to these reasons, I strongly disagree that teacher salaries should be based upon their students academic performance.