Running head: ACTION INQUIRY RESEARCH PAPER- MERIT PAY

Action Inquiry Research Paper- School Finance
Jennifer Ponton
Grand Canyon

EDA 535

July 01, 2012

Action Inquiry Research Paper- School Finance
Statement of the Problem
This past spring thousands of teachers protested at the Louisiana State Capital to prevent Louisiana lawmakers from passing an educational reform bill proposed by Governor Bobby Jindall that would change the face of public education in Louisiana forever. Many superintendents and school personnel were relieved of their professional responsibilities on the days they protested hoping that they could sway the governor and the lawmakers from passing the bill. The bill was passed even without the support of …show more content…

(2009 Associated Press) Proponents of merit pay say it doesn’t pay. There is very little evidence that shows that merit pay system aimed at individual teachers actually improves the quality of education among students (Steiny, J., 2009). The Teacher Incentive Fund is a 600 million federal grant program that is designed to support innovative ways to reform teacher pay. It also supports performance based teacher compensation in order to attract high performance teachers at good schools.
Background and Context of the Problem
Merit pay originated in England according to Troen and Bolen in 1710 (Holland, R., 2005). Teachers were paid back then on how well their students perform in reading, writing, and arithmetic which resulted in most teachers teaching to the test or cheating. Due to all of the cheating and teaching to test merit pay was deleted from England (Holland 2005).
Even though merit pay may be considered popular by some educators critics of it accused it of undermining teamwork and forcing many educators of working alone to be compensated instead of working as a team. It is also accused of forcing employees to only work on short term goals and to line their compensation with political skills. In other words the people who are better able to play the politics at school are more likely to be rewarded with merit pay because they will have better students and resources given to them than their peers.
Research Questions and Hypothesis
How can merit pay