Merit pay has failed repeatedly, and it's no surprise. When you

The words of Randi Weingarten, “Merit pay has failed repeatedly, and it's no surprise. When you base teacher pay on standardized test scores, you won't improve education; you just promote the high-stakes testing craze that's led parents, students, and educators to shout 'Enough!' all across the country,” are a cry from the heart of the teaching profession itself — a voice defending the soul of learning against the cold machinery of numbers. In her words resound the ancient tension between wisdom and measurement, between the sacred duty of teaching and the modern obsession with quantifying human worth. Weingarten reminds us that education is not a factory, and children are not products to be tested, weighed, and labeled; they are living minds, growing spirits, and the lifeblood of civilization itself.

In the spirit of the ancients, we may say that her words echo those of Plato, who warned that true education is not the filling of a vessel, but the kindling of a flame. To reduce teachers to scorekeepers and students to statistics is to mistake the shadow for the substance. Merit pay, in its shallow promise, tries to motivate through fear and reward — but in doing so, it strips away the sacred bond between teacher and pupil. The ancients would have called this folly hubris: the arrogance of believing that wisdom can be bought or measured. For knowledge, like virtue, grows only where there is trust, patience, and love.

The origin of Weingarten’s words lies in the long battle over education reform in modern America. As president of the American Federation of Teachers, she saw policymakers chasing the illusion that test scores could serve as the pure measure of a teacher’s worth. Again and again, merit pay systems were introduced — and again and again, they failed. They failed not because teachers resisted accountability, but because the measure itself was broken. A test cannot measure inspiration. A number cannot capture empathy. A score cannot reflect the light in a student’s eyes when they finally understand. The heart of teaching beats in a realm beyond metrics — it lives in the courage to nurture growth even when no one is watching.

To see the truth of her words, we need only look to the history of nations that forgot this wisdom. In the early 2000s, as the high-stakes testing movement swept through schools, classrooms became test-preparation camps. Teachers were forced to “teach to the test,” creativity was stifled, and learning became an exercise in memorization rather than understanding. The joy of discovery — that sacred spark that makes learning divine — began to fade. And when parents saw their children’s curiosity replaced by anxiety, when teachers saw their craft reduced to compliance, they rose together to cry, as Weingarten said, “Enough!” It was a rebellion not of politics, but of the heart.

Even in ancient times, wise teachers understood that education is an art, not a transaction. Confucius taught that a great teacher shapes character, not just intellect. Socrates sought not to reward answers, but to awaken questions. These masters knew what Weingarten knows: that true teaching is an act of faith and humanity, not a contest of results. To tie a teacher’s livelihood to numbers is to turn sacred duty into marketplace bargaining — and what grows from that soil is not wisdom, but weariness.

Yet her words are not only lament, but warning and hope. They remind us that the heart of education must be reclaimed. If we wish to heal our schools, we must begin by trusting our teachers — those who labor daily not for gold, but for the light of knowledge. We must value their compassion as much as their competence, their patience as much as their performance. We must measure success not in scores, but in souls lifted, lives changed, and minds opened to possibility. For in every generation, it is the teacher who holds civilization together — one student at a time.

Let this, then, be the lesson: education thrives where love is stronger than fear, and dies where numbers rule without mercy. We must not mistake the test for the truth, nor the score for the spirit. A society that rewards only what it can measure will one day find it has lost what matters most — curiosity, creativity, and conscience. So honor the teachers who teach for love, not for praise. Support schools that nurture thinkers, not test-takers. And remember always that the truest merit of a teacher lies not in a number, but in the generations of wisdom they leave behind.

For as the ancients would say: the greatest measure of a teacher is not found in what they achieve, but in what they awaken.