Who should be paid more money?

[Wellardmac]

catchacab wrote:

If you want to improve education

1. Eliminate tenure

2. Pay based on performance not seniority

3. Increase educational funding

Imagine a great teacher being recruited away by another school district offering him/her more money. Or being able to fire the teacher who has been in the district for 20 years that isn't able to connect with his/her students. Now we would have the free market economy working in the educational system.

I'm with you. Many teachers forget about performance and just fall into a rut.

I would love to see the same performance management systems that we use in industry used in the education system - boy would we hear whining then! Complaints about heavily subsidized (or free) healthcare would fade when the prospect of a low ranking and termination of employment comes in because they've not performed well enough this year.

I have to perform day in day out. It's not about what I did last year, it's about what I've done for my company this year - what have I personally done to contribute to earnings? What have you done for me lately?!? If I do not excel, then I don't get a raise. If my company does not reach targets, then I don't get a bonus - one that is incidentally a large part of my total compensation. Talk about motivation.

The pressure to produce is there and real. You went with the flow this year - low ranking and no raise for you! Consistantly low ranked? Then I guess we haave to show you the door!

The bar for performance in industry is raised year after year. Doing a "good" job now gets you a low ranking because everyone is pushed to excel (I am sadly not exaggerating).

When I do performance management for my research groups I am faced with the reality that I (and my peers) routinely have to give low ranking to people who 5 years ago would have been regarded as "doing a good job". Doing a good job no longer cuts it - we now live in a world where we have to push to do more with less, achieve more faster, create better performing products that cost less. Do more than our colleagues.

I can guarantee that anyone that works in my business is highly motivated to raise the bar and contribute, otherwise they (at best) do not get financially rewarded and at worst quickly find themselves being escorted out the door. There is no such thing as coasting in my job.