"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote in message
...
We have the same problem in private industry, but there are ways to
mitigate it and I still believe that pay for performance is critical to
achieving high performance. You could have merit pay based on the
performance of an entire grade or school (somewhat analagous to profit
sharing at a corporation). You can also base merit pay and promotions
on how much a teacher helps and mentors other teachers. This is an
explicit promotion requirement for technical professionals at my
company. If you are keeping the goods to yourself, you'll not get
promoted. No system is perfect, but I've worked in both environments,
and I'll take a merit/performance based compensation system any day.

Correct; no system is perfect; OTOH, a system that has no incentives, or
worse, negative incentive, is doomed to failure. Public schools are a prime
example of negative incentives.