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Merit pay bases salaries on specific evaluation criteria. One criterion for evaluating teacher performance is student achievement. Seems fair enough, right? WRONG! Basing teacher salaries on whether or not students achieve dooms almost all teachers to involuntary mediocrity. Students refuse to do work, hurry through work to get done so they can sleep the remainder of the class, miss 25 days out of each 45 day grading period, guess randomly at questions that they have been exposed to, but not payed a LICK of attention to, etc. The list goes on and on!!! Now how can a teacher's pay be determined from the "achievements" of students who put forth no effort whatsoever, even after EVERY POSSIBLE AVENUE OF ASSISTANCE HAS BEEN TRIED? How is that indicative of TRUE teacher effectiveness?

Teachers cannot be held responsible to make sure students are at school every day. Teachers cannot be held responsible for students who refuse to do ANY work in the room, and who get outwardly HOSTILE when the concept is even WHISPERED in their presence. Teachers cannot be held accountable for parents' GROSS lack of interest in their children's educations. Teachers cannot be held responsible for administrators' lack of support in maintaining civil school environments. Teachers can LEAD the horse to water, but cannot FORCE the horse to drink as much of society BELIEVES they can!!!

Also, one of the stipulations by which a teacher's effectiveness is to be judged is the lack of ANY DISRUPTION in the classroom. That's right. If Johnny decides to disrupt and sing out in class, thus disrupting other students, this automatically labels the teacher as "ineffective" since the classroom environment is not maintained in such a manner as to be conducive to learning at all times. I challenge ANYONE in society to run six classes a day with absolutely ZERO disruptions!!! Guaranteed it cannot be done, hence the fact that this standard is RIDICULOUS AND UNATTAINABLE!!!

Putting this debate into such euphemistic terminology and catch phrases is quite convenient for those who are not privy to the goings-on of the education environment (from the TEACHERS' persepctives), but these terms and phrases are ultimately disingenuous...