Falcon: Teachers should be paid based on performance
Posted January 4, 2011 8:42 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Kevin Falcon‘s latest campaign promise isn’t making him many friends in the education community. The Liberal leadership hopeful says his idea to pay teachers based on merit is a reward for inspiration and excellence, not a wholesale change of earning a paycheque.
“It’s a bonus system that recognizes that some of our teachers are master teachers…that they have achieved a level of excellence where they are rewarded through a bonus, and that they can use those skill sets as part of the agreement of being a master teacher, that they will mentor other teachers,” he explains.
As for how to decide which teachers get a bonus, Falcon says he will talk with teachers, administrators, and parents to identify innovative educators who can earn the bonus and the title of master teacher.
He didn’t exactly come up with the idea himself. US President Barack Obama has also come out in favour of a similar proposal.
But Susan Lambert, president of the BC Teachers Federation, is not a fan of Falcon’s idea. “I don’t know what his intentions are. I do know that scheme is an American model. It is based on a kind of very old fashioned factory model, or production model of education, that has no place in the 21st century.”
Lambert adds the idea comes from the same mindset that ranks schools based on standardized test results. Some critics feel we should try merit-based pay with politicians first.
