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A start on teacher raises

The STAR performance pay plan leaves plenty of room for improvement.

By Times editorial
Published May 5, 2006

Lawmakers have taken three crucial steps toward a true performance pay plan for Florida schoolteachers: listening to educators, offering real money and rejecting the high-handed bureaucratic approach. That said, the Special Teachers Are Rewarded (STAR) plan to be adopted today still has to be considered a work in progress.

The plan sets aside $147.5-million next year for bonuses that would go to roughly one in every four teachers, and it gives each district the responsibility to create a bonus system that relies heavily on how well each teacher's students have performed. The problem is that the deadline is only eight months away, and districts are supposed to get their plans approved by the same agency whose behavior has been both schizophrenic and vindictive.

Remember, the "e-comp" pay plan announced in February by Education Commissioner John Winn was so contorted that even House Education Appropriations Chairman Joe Pickens took to calling it "Brand X." Can lawmakers now trust Commissioner X to treat districts fairly?

The biggest obstacle to performance pay has been lack of trust. Underpaid teachers are prone to seeing it as a gimmick, and the e-comp offering didn't help matters. Winn, after his office had originally approved 67 performance pay plans, then turned around and wrote his own rule. He said teachers should be judged almost exclusively by how well students score on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.

House members, including Pickens and PreK-12 Committee Chairman Ralph Artza, deserve credit for their attempts to restore the broken trust. Even Florida Education Association spokesman Mark Pudlow was quick to call their work an improvement over Winn's rule.

The next step, though, may take more time and a new education commissioner. Developing performance evaluations for a broad range of teachers won't be easy and won't be meaningful until teachers themselves embrace the standards. The money will matter, too. This year, lawmakers had enough money to provide for fair raises as well as bonuses, but will they commit to both in future years? The state also commits $134-million to another recognition program, based on the FCAT, that generally hands out teacher bonuses in much less discriminating ways. Should the two efforts be combined?

The manner in which the STAR plan is being adopted, through appropriations proviso language, is never a desirable way to put legislation together. But STAR is an earnest start, and lawmakers should be eager to improve upon it next year.

[Last modified May 5, 2006, 06:33:59]