Value-Related Issues in a Departmental Merit Pay Plan.” The Professional Educator. Spring XXVI(2

This article presents a faculty-designed merit pay plan along with a discussion of some of its perceived values. The merit pay plan discussed here advocates that (1) there is a need among teacher education faculty to have control over the design and implementation of any merit pay process that evaluates and rewards the value-laden work they perform, and (2) for merit pay purposes, teacher educators ought to consider giving a higher point value (i.e., evaluation of merit) to the various types of applied activities that are central to the school-university missions and programs within schools of education. Suggested improvements to the plan presented are offered throughout the paper within the context of apparent values imbedded in a typical merit pay process used to reward faculty achievements and contributions. Teacher education faculty, in particular, may find the discussion of this plan useful in relation to elements of already existing plans or future ones. Historically, merit pay plans have not been accepted among most educators at any level (Urbansky,1997; Balkin,1996; Johnson,1984), have lacked precise measurement and have created teacher motivation problems (Charnofsky