Should teachers be paid based on their performance in the classroom but not on their qualifications?

No.

Check ” this ” : http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB100014240527…

The college I teach at, faculty salaries and titles are determined by their education and years of experience (both in teaching and in their area of expertise).

However, we are evaluated every term based on classroom observations, means of assessment and student outcomes, and student reviews.

If a faculty does poorly on these, they get flagged, spoken with (toward improvement), and possibly written up. Three flags and you can be let go.

It’s tough because the students come with different capabilities each year. In fact, my impression is that students come with less capabilities each year (I may be wrong). So you can’t gauge teachers on the final result (comparing one year’s students vs the previous year’s). Although I wonder if you can gauge teachers on improvement before vs after? That would be a measure of how much the students gained.

I’m not really sure how you measure performance. It is pretty easy to teach that WW1 started in 1914 and test that. It is harder to teach and test why WW1 was started. The why is the important bit.

Hasn’t NCLB been considered a failure?

It’s not an either / or question. It should be both.

What we should do is increase the requirements for becoming a teacher. In Finland a masters degree is required and teachers are regarded as professionals like doctors and lawyers. Should a hospital pay its doctors based on how well they cure patients? Totally absurd. The same holds for teachers.

A combination. Why does it have to be either or? Probably the most heavily weighted should be performance.

I’d lean toward performance, but considering that in the US anyway, it’s all about teaching to the test, not teaching kids to love learning, or even teaching them how to think. So as a teacher you’re kinda screwed anyway.