It's not hypocritcal to demand merit pay for teachers if you practice it yourself

Walter Gardner at Education Week argues that "It's Hypocritical to Demand Merit Pay for Teachers."
His argument is based on the fact that many companies provide golden parachutes to CEOs and other execs.  Of course, this is not unique to corporations, school districts do it with superintendents that are fired all the time.  The larger point is that Gardner can't take what amounts to a practice that pertains to the smallest percentage of corporate workers and universalize it as if it's standard practice in corporations.  In addition, he specifically points out Fran Tarkenton's article as the example of hypocrisy.  He never addresses whether or not the Hall of Fame quarterback uses merit pay consistently in his company or not.  If Tarkenton does use the practice of merit pay, then he is not a hypocrite. 

The fact is that most corporations in the United State pay professional employees on some sort of merit pay system.  The systems may not be perfect.  No system that I know of is perfect.  Humans aren't perfect (at least not last time I checked).

The larger question is what is the goal of a merit pay system and what is an appropriate form of merit pay to accomplish the desired goals.  As I've written about many times, most merit pay systems, for both teachers and often in the corporate world, do not align with the real strategic goals of the organization.  Therefore, they are neither motivating nor do they align with the real tasks that management would like to see accomplished. 

The real question has little to do with hypocrisy and lots to do with how we keep teachers accountable to their profession.