Punishment for Good Teachers (and Students)

From a couple of different places I have heard a specific tidbit about the recent plan Bill Gates proposed for reforming education. (In the interest of full disclosure, I have not read the plan. So, I do not know the context surrounding this comment.) The suggestion is to give good teachers more students so that the teachers who need help can have lower class sizes. Those good teachers would get a monetary compensation for taking on those students.


I have mixed feelings about this suggestion. On one hand, it is possible that those good teachers:

• Would be agreeable if it's a temporary situation
• Might not mind if it allows a colleague to get help 
• May like the extra pay 
• Are up to the challenge

However, it seems more like a punishment of those teachers and their students because:

• A temporary situation for a teacher is not the same thing to a student. The student only has a finite number of terms in his/her education. Each one is as important as the last.
• More students in the classroom put strains on infrastructure, student-to-student interactions, management issues, etc.
• Most good teachers ask students for work that is harder and requires more time to grade
• Students get less(maybe no)individual time with the teacher
• Teacher must put in extra work just to learn all names (let alone learn anything about each student)
• Most teachers are not in the profession for the money (I don't know if some non-educators actually realize or believe this.)

Sometimes when trying to address one issue (like that of how to help lower performing teachers), it is easy to think of an idea that sounds good for that purpose and easier to loose sight of other perspectives. In addition, it can also be difficult to think of the unintended consequences.