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 r

One of the nation's greatest responsibilities is ensuring that all students are afforded an equal opportunity to achieve the same level and quality of education. The staple of our classrooms oftentimes comes not from the endless series of textbooks and school supplies, but from our instructors. It may be argued, then, that teacher's should be judged soley off of how their students perform academically. Although in certain cases this may provide incentive for teacher's to instruct to their best abilities, it fails to recognize that the academic performance of students does not entirely rest on the shoulders of the teacher. There are a wide variety of other factors that influence student success in the classroom that are completely out of the control of the teacher, who soon may feel powerless if students in the classroom fail for reasons unrelated to the instruction. To some degree, teacher incentives may provide motivation to teachers to continually push the boundries of student success; however, teacher salaries should not be completely based off of the success of the class due to the individuality of all students, variety of other issues outside of the classroom that may cause them to perform poorly in academics, promotion of teacher's to ensure "passing" from the class at whatever the cost, and the discrepency of what truly defines academic performance in the first place.

While it is the responsibility of the teacher to ensure that all students have ample opportunities to suceed, it is oftentimes not entirely the teacher's fault for how well certain students pick up the material or perform academically. There are certain students, particularly those with special needs, who need an amalgam of extra resources to even learn on the same playing field. Conditions such as ADHD, dyslexia, and severe anxiety of which the teacher has no control over may hinder a student's performance in the classroom. Furthermore, there are certain troublesome students who may find enjoyment out of hindering the learning environement by continual disruption. Should the teacher's salary be at stake every time a student is to act out? Academic performance of students can depend on a wide variety of factors that deviate from teacher quality such as personal issues like self-esteem, family turmoil, or medical problems. Hence, if we put the weight of our teacher's salaraies entirely overall student performance, we allow their salaries to become depenedent on certain aspects of life that are forever changing and certainly not in the teacher's control.

Creating high stakes salary incentives for teacher's may very well turn the nurturing nature of the classroom into a businessroom as the instructor employs every means possible to ensure the success of the class. This could actually sacrifice the child's education from the persepctive that this teacher may now go to any lengths to ensure that the class succeeds. This could in turn lead to easier instruction and lack of challenging material for example. Essentially, this could potentially turn the teacher from a loving caring instructor into an insecure bussinessman who will do anything to ensure that the salary comes in. Some may debate here that, despite the added pressure a teacher would feel on his own personal salary, this could actual engage our teacher's better in the classroom. Without teacher salary incentive, many are subject to laziness and disinterest. However, there are a variety of other ways to encourage engagement such as added bonuses and paid leave that do not put the instructor salary at risk.

It also may be argued about exactly what it means to be have good "acadmic performance." Is this measure coming from standarized test alone? Would academic performance be measured in the same way across every school? If not, would this create a discrepency in the expected performance of one classroom to the other? How would we measure this success for football coaches and music instructors? What truly measures academic performance from an unbiased standpoint? All of these questions would need to be evaluated to consider the discerepencies between public and private schools, demographics of students, and family income, all of which greatly impact student academic performance.

It is the responsibility of our country to ensure that all teacher's are teaching and all students are learning. Although some may argue that a high stakes incentive, such as teacher salary, should depend upon the students overall academic performance, this allows our teacher's to literally depend on the changing whims of the classrooms and aspects of it that are out of the control of our teachers. Although teacher incentives may encourage instructors to pursure a higher standard of education, it may also encourage them to ensure academic performance no matter the cost, which may very well lead to a decline in classroom instruction. Furthermore, there is a discrepency from school to school about what truly defines good "academic performance" in the first place. Hence, although our teacher should be given incentives to encourage the the best education of our students, their year's earnings should not depend on the factor of academic performance alone.