Question: Consider merit pay for teachers. Schools face constant pressure to change their management approaches to improve performance, which is usually assessed by standardized reading, math, and science scores. In most school teacher’s pay is determined by seniority, years of total teaching experience, and credentials. Pay is rarely based on performance, which is contrary to the belief among parents and private sector. Parents and business leaders lament that there are no carrots/sticks used to motivate teachers. Consequently, there has been greater push to implement some form of merit pay to improve the motivation
Which of the following statements will disapprove the claim of the parents and business leaders?
The claim made by parents and business leaders is that it is lamentable that “there are no carrots/sticks used to motivate teachers”. The option that disproves this claim is option 1 because if teachers are self-motivated, the provision of merit pay would not help in motivating them in any manner.
Option 2 supports the claim made by the parents instead of disproving it by indicating that financial incentives would work in motivating teachers. Eliminate option 2.
Option 3 disputes the yardstick used for assessing the performance of the teachers but does not pertain specifically to the claim made by parents and business leaders.
Options 4 and 5 do not bear any effect on the mentioned claim.
Hence, the correct answer is option 1.