President Obama's education agenda, which unhappily seems to be George W. Bush's program squared, contains two major features that will impact teacher pay and working conditions. The first is that charter schools are to be promoted aggressively. The second is an insistence on teacher merit pay. In this article, the author talks about teacher merit pay and examines whether merit pay could work the same way--as bonuses for brownnosers or favoritism will result in unfair competition for merit pay. The author discusses the idea behind merit pay and describes one undesirable aspect of merit pay, which is increasing competition and decreasing cooperation among teachers. (Contains 4 notes.)