... after anger subsided

After a few days, I've had a chance to reconsider, or at least re-evaluate, my initial reaction to Christina Varghese's comment on teacher merit pay.

In How to Make Better Teachers, Claudia Wallis asks of great teachers, which she admits are rare in numbers:

How do they come by their craft? What qualities and capacities do they possess? Can these abilities be measured? Can they be taught? Perhaps above all: How should excellent teaching be rewarded so that the best teachers -- the most competent, caring and compelling -- remain in a profession known for low pay, low status and soul-crushing bureaucracy?

A few prerequisites were mentioned in the article. Now let's attempt to apply those guidelines to Varghese (based only upon her quote, but I think that's alright).

• A deep knowledge of one's subject: the higher the grade, the more closely student achievement correlates to a teachers expertise in her field. As seen in Ms. Varghese's website, she clearly fits that criteria.
  
  
• On the job practice: two years to master the basics of classroom management and six to seven years to become a fully proficient teacher. As a 10 year veteran, Varghese's got this one in the bag.
  
  
• But probably the most important: an unshakable belief in children's capacity to learn. Margaret Gayle, an expert on gifted education at Duke University, says "anyone without this has no business in the classroom." Despite Varghese's credentials, it may be possible that her passion for her subject doesn't translate into her teaching methods.
  

Professional Compensation, or ProComp, is the merit pay equivalent in Denver. Taylor Betz is similar to Christina Varghese in that htey are both veteran math teachers in struggling schools. Betz, however, "didn't expect performance pay to change anything about how she does her job, but says it has made her more driven." She refuses to let kids fail and promised to bulldoze whatever the problem is and solve it. She says, "I'm not a money grubber. Most teachers aren't. But people in other professions get raises, why shouldn't we?"

I think it's completely understandable that teachers should want more money, because quite frankly, they deserve it. However, teaching is a profession understood to have low pay so it's frustrating to see teachers place greater value on monetary profit than student achievement.
Betz takes an appropriate stance in calling merit pay a "just reward." But that's exactly what it should. Especially considering:

Research suggests that a good teacher is the single most important factor in boosting achievement, more important than class size, the dollars spent per student or the quality of textbooks and materials.

While the money is definitely attractive, it shouldn't govern the teaching methods or taint the understanding that student achievement comes first and foremost.