Quotas kill educational merit pay--but there's a solution

Google "merit pay" education problems and you'll find over 463,000 articles, studies and papers detailing chronic failings with the implementation of merit pay.

One of the top-mentioned problems with merit pay is:

Quotas. Too many systems provided for a limited number of "slots" in a given merit pay system. Assuming a normal distribution of teacher performance is a bad mistake. Excellent schools hold more then their fare share of excellent teachers. This gives them an advantage in terms of overall teacher quality, but puts near-excellent teachers at a comparative disadvantage.

CHARTER SCHOOLS have the option to incorporate forecasting and compensation models that encourage more teachers to achieve excellence. Rather than grading and paying teachers on a curve, schools should judge them against clear and attainable standards instead. As a charter school, it is better to deal with the problem of paying a staff full of star educators than to suffer the constant churn when mediocre teachers disillusion parents and depart the movement.