Semantron 2014

evaluate how strong this correlation is for each individual case.

may cause some teachers who had worked hardest, yet achieved below a set target, to quit teaching as they found that their efforts went both unrewarded and penalized. This lottery like pay system would be further undermined by the effect of smaller classes. They would be more prone to feeling the effects of random variation in pupilÊs performances. Thus, smaller classes would have more extreme lows and highs. These swings in performance will often not be a result of teaching, but a by-product of natural variation which would undoubtedly exaggerate the inefficient and unfair side- effects of the aforementioned system required for performance based pay. Research by the eminent Daniel Hahnemann has shown that organizations and individuals often extrapolate and draw conclusions from limited data which leads to false presumptions about the causation of outcomes. Its implications in teaching are that teachers would be credited for a few years of favourable results and penalized for a few years of poorer results, despite the fact that a few years is not enough time to accurately assign success or failure to a teacherÊs work. Thus the problem of making pay fair and justified comes at the cost of making it responsive to a teacherÊs efforts. I have immediately ruled out any system where a teacherÊs pay entirely depends on exam results, simply because it leads to the extreme possibility that a teacherÊs salary could potentially fall to a level below that required for basic survivals a consequence of flawed evidence. But in a perfect world, all pay would be performance derived and we would be able to distinguish between every teacher. We could perfectly measure the useful effort and output of all teachers, regardless of affecting variables, towards the final purpose of education and pay them accordingly. But in the real world, where incentives are fundamental to optimizing outcomes, utilizing them in a way that is both socially acceptable and economically beneficial is a tricky balancing act. There is no way to guarantee that pay is fair or justifiable. This, compounded with the flawed system required to sustain any performance based pay, cannot be used to

A significant problem to be drawn attention to would be the possible unforeseen consequences of directly incentivizing the melioration of examination results through performance based pay. Incentives would almost certainly have an effect on the grades of their students, but it is important to ask how great this would be and who would benefit from it. Any performance based pay would certainly alter the effort a teacher would be willing to provide. But assuming total rationality, and selfishness, on the teacherÊs part would lead the teacher to follow the most direct path to receiving a higher pay. This draws me to conclude that any incentive wouldnÊt lead to a higher level of teaching equally distributed across the classroom, but instead focused teaching on students who would be easiest to help achieve the highest possible grades and on those, closest to grade boundaries, requiring the least effort to bump up a grade. This would almost certainly lead to the neglect of those pupils deemed by their teachers of holding the least potential or those deemed most difficult to teach. Those with the most need would be left the most neglected and thus any incentive would almost certainly lead to immoral and unfair outcomes. The practicality of using such performance based pay must also be questioned. Any performance based pay system must have some form of target, which once surpassed leads to a higher salary. But due to the impossibility of judging all input factors that form the outcome of an exam result, constantly adjusting expectations for each academic year that are of a consistent, achievable and justifiable level for teachers is impossible. Natural variations in classes and the impossibility of measuring a teachers ability to influence exam scores guarantee that exam results are never consistent, thus incorrectly set targets for exam results may end up altering the pay of teachers unfairly. Potentially allowing poorer teachers to reap higher, undeserved, salaries and vice versa. Such an unfair pay system

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