Krazen's obsession notwithstanding, you guys really think teachers should get a 30% raise? Maybe they can at least tie it to performance?
In this case, no, I don't think they should get the raise, but I don't buy the "pay by performance" argument that much, partially because of what Xahar said, what it's difficult to agree on what "performance" is anyway, but also because it's not always fair to single out the teacher because of the nature of the work.
But aren't all jobs essentially "merit" based? If you are a bad factory worker, you get fired. If you suck at flipping burgers at Burger King, you get fired. The idea that you can't fire a teacher because her students aren't learning is absurd.
I suppose you could consider them such, but there's a difference between educational positions and flipping burgers. In the latter scenario, pretty much everything is provided to you. You have co-workers to rely on, the patties to cook, and a stove to cook them on, the tools to do it, and people to serve them to who are willing to eat.
In the former, the teacher may not have willing students to deal with. The teacher might be from an inner-city school with alot of cultural issues, or a poor school that needs repairs, or a school that lacks the necessary resources to compete with all the others. While the Burger King employee has everything there with him, it's almost entirely about his or her performance, while the teacher relies on everything that may not always be there. So there is more to blame for failing grades than just the teacher.
To make the burger flipper and the teacher on equal footing, you would have to throw a number of cogs in burger boy's machine. Unwilling customers, defective stoves, lack of burgers in stock, employees that are unreliable, etc.
