I too am a teacher in a Career Ladder district and right now I feel like, really, just give me the extra money. Would I do less of a job if you just increased my salary? No! Making teachers jump through "clerical" hoops just to get their performance pay is ridiculous. You know, turn in this paperwork, or as in my last district, this "huge" binder! Why? To prove that I did everything I could to help students achieve. Aren't we all doing that anyway? I would prefer to see Obama lead our country in treating teaching as a true profession and holding our colleagues to that standard. If we want to be viewed as a profession and receive the pay that goes along with that, then we all need to start behaving like professionals. Join professional organizations, continue to study your craft with like-minded colleagues, and stop teaching the same boring lessons from the teacher's manual and actually start thinking for yourself! Yes, teaching is hard, but so is most everything in life that is worth it. Failure is not an option.