States push to pay teachers based on performance

Associated Press

ATLANTA

For parents and politicians hungry for better schools, the idea of paying teachers more if their students perform better can seem as basic as adding two and two or spelling “cat.”

Yet just a handful of schools and districts around the country use such strategies. In some states, the idea is effectively illegal.

That could all be changing as the federal government wields billions of dollars in grants to lure states and school districts to try the idea. The money is convincing lawmakers around the country while highlighting the complex problems surrounding pay-for- performance systems.

Some teachers, such as Trenise Duvernay, who teaches math at Alice M. Harte Charter School outside New Orleans, want to be rewarded for helping students succeed. Duvernay is eligible for $2,000 a year or more in merit bonuses based on how well her students perform in classroom observations and on achievement tests.

“It’s a reward for doing what we all have a passion to do anyway — making sure our kids master the skills they need in order to be successful,” Duvernay said.

Other teachers, such as Debra Gunter, a middle-school math teacher in Cobb County, Ga., say teachers can’t control which kids walk into their classrooms.

Some researchers have found student achievement improves when teachers get performance bonuses. Others have found no correlation.

The push for performance pay programs dates to 1950 but has mostly failed because districts and states didn’t get buy-in from teachers and couldn’t come up with objective ways to measure performance.

School districts in most states calculate pay based on seniority and level of education. For example, teachers who get master’s degrees generally get a pay bump.

In a massive survey of the nation’s teachers released in March, most said they value nonmonetary rewards, such as time to collaborate with other teachers and a supportive school leadership, over higher salaries. Only 28 percent felt performance pay would have a strong impact, and 30 percent felt performance pay would have no impact at all. The survey was conducted by Harris Interactive and paid for by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Scholastic Inc.

Still, lawmakers and education officials in many states are pushing the idea.

The states and Washington, D.C., hope to win some of the $4.35 billion in highly competitive federal “Race the Top” money available this year to states that embrace education reforms such as merit pay and charter schools.