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Maria Rodriguez
Mr. Schmitt
English 1001-Section 34
28 October 2014
Credibility of Dr. Gratz
It is very unlikely that someone will enjoy not getting some type of credit or appreciation
for the hard work they have put in. School districts are facing the very tough decision of paying
teachers based on their student’s performance. This system is called merit pay, otherwise known
as teacher pay-for-performance. Since merit pay has a wide variety of pros and cons to consider,
Professor Donald Gratz writes an article based on why performance pay should not be used.
Donald B. Gratz, the author of “The Problem with Performance Pay” evaluates the history and
deeper issues of the performance pay. For someone deciding to research on this topic and use
this source, he or she must first recognize if the source is credible and reliable. A few ways to
decide if a source is credible is to analyze the author, publisher, and claims that are stated within
the article.
Dr. Donald Gratz wrote the article, “The Problem with Performance Pay” in Education
Leadership magazine. This article is intended to inform readers that performance pay should not
be used in school systems. Dr. Gratz explains the history from Great Britain schools that used the
performance pay in their school systems. He also did some research in 1999 at a school in
Denver based on if the performance pay should be considered valid. After his evaluations, he
calculated a few assumptions that were made from the schools. One of them was that schools
want to include the performance pay because they think teachers do not have motivation.
Schools also assume they are not doing as well as they should be. In order to improve, they
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included money into the equation to gain a solution of the best educators in town. Lastly, schools
think academic scores are the only things that are important enough to measure. Since schools
think these “reasons” are important enough to include the performance pay. Dr. Gratz explains
otherwise (Gratz 76-79).
Donald B. Gratz is a well-known educated man. Gratz has attended numerous years of
school in education during his lifetime. This includes a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan
University, a master’s degree from Harvard University, and a PhD from Boston College. He has
received experience in education for over 35 years in both low and high education levels. Gratz
has written on numerous educational issues, including the teacher pay-for–performance problem.
One example of this is his book written on teacher pay-for-performance called, The Peril and
Promise of Performance Pay. For writing on these issues, he has presented a presentation to the
