Lawmaker works on merit pay for teachers
Rep. Ed Robb, R-Columbia, is hashing out details of legislation that would allow school districts to pay teachers based on merit.
A final draft of the bill has not yet been filed, but Robb expects the proposal to allow differential pay based on performance as well as expertise in shortage areas such as science, math and special education.
"We need to attract science and math teachers and teachers in other specialized areas," Robb said. "We’re going to have to have some differential pay just for that, let alone pay based on quality teaching. It makes sense this year we make it happen. You can’t ignore it forever."
Rep. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, who is chairwoman of the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee, said passing a merit pay law is one of her priorities this year.
"How do we get good teachers into the classroom?" she said. "We have to reward teachers like they’re professionals. We’ve got to attract the best, and we’ve got to recognize their performance financially."
The Missouri School Boards’ Association - a group that’s been at odds with Robb about other education proposals - supports the idea.
"To allow school boards to develop some sort of differential pay schedule for teachers is an idea worth considering," Brent Ghan, spokesman of the school boards’ association, said. "There ought to be ways to come up with a process of evaluating teachers and rewarding those who are outstanding performers or offer differential pay in shortage areas."
Missouri law now requires districts to operate teacher salary schedules, a mandate that essentially prohibits merit pay. Missouri courts have ruled that schools cannot pay teachers higher wages based on subject area or withhold salary increases based on low performance. The Ladue School District in St. Louis County, however, has been paying teachers for performance for more than 50 years without legal challenge.
Robb said teacher performance would be measured on student improvement, not a one-time test score.
Merit pay based on student improvement alleviates some concerns about measuring teacher performance, but it doesn’t change the fact that students have unique needs, Columbia Board of Education President Karla DeSpain said.
"The problem becomes that every child is different, which means that every class is different," she said. "… If a teacher has a number of kids that require different strategies and more attention, there may be a limit to the teacher’s ability to challenge each of the other students in the classroom."
Regardless of individual student needs, quality teaching is easy to recognize, said Trent Amond, director of Columbia Independent School. CIS bases pay increases on routine observations of teachers in action.
"In general, there’s a pretty consistent impression across multiple observers of what a good teacher is," Amond said. "It’s not dependent on" teaching "style, it’s how that style is used to relate to students and help students learn and grow. In general, having a performance component to an evaluation system is a good way to recognize those employees who really excel at their profession."
Although DeSpain said she has "mixed feelings" about merit pay, she supports the state giving districts more flexibility when it comes to compensating teachers. But she warned that merit systems aren’t necessarily cheaper for taxpayers. "The two criteria I have read about are that the base pay must be competitive to begin with, and merit increases must be enough money to be motivating and meaningful to the teacher," she said.
Columbia school board member Jan Mees, a former media specialist, remains opposed to the idea of merit pay, fearing that it could have unintended consequences.
"It could put pressure on a teacher to maybe work harder with one child than another," she said. "I realize that teachers 99 percent of the time work hard to bring everybody up, but when there’s a dollar amount equated to that, I think it can be a slippery slope."
1 comment:
All teachers, regardless of the subject, should be rewarded for their excellence in teaching. While there are shortages in the areas of math and science, you will create shortages in the arts if these teachers and their efforts do not receive the same consideration as those who teach math and science. Do we value an education in the arts at all anymore?
Additionally, there are many things beyond a teachers controll with regard to home life, personal life and study habits at home that lead to student success or failure. Should teachers be held accountable for what they have absolutely no control over? What other professional is held accountable in this way? A teacher's success should not be measured by student achievement alone. A teacher can relate well in the classroom and be very knowledgeable but if the student doesn't want to do the work and the parent does not hold their child accountable, there is little the teacher can do. When are we going to hold PARENTS accountable for holding their child's feet to the fire? Teachers should be rewarded if they consistently demonstrate excellent performance in the classroom. This can be witnessed and should be witnessed frequently by the administration to make that determination. Teaching is one of the hardest jobs on the planet. Properly reward teachers and give them the respect they deserve. Stop the attack on teachers and hold parents and students equally responsible for learning goals.
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