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Changing the way we pay teachers

By HOWARD TROXLER
Published June 4, 2006

There are different ways to decide how much to pay somebody.

One way is to say, "Everybody who does X job gets paid X dollars."

Maybe we adjust that amount for seniority. But maybe we don't. If you are, for example, a judge, or a member of the Florida Legislature, you get paid a flat rate.

A second way to set somebody's pay is on the basis of merit. Maybe it's how many oranges you can pick in a day. Maybe you're a great leftfielder, or chef, or plumber.

When it comes to these two philosophies, Florida is at an important turning point. Under Gov. Jeb Bush and the Legislature, we are changing the way we pay our teachers.

The basic model we have used until now is a negotiated pay scale on a county-by-county basis. Each county's school board makes a deal with teachers. The deal is most often based on X dollars for doing X job, adjusted for years of service and other factors.

For the first time, a teacher's merit, or performance, is going to be a widespread factor in setting salaries. We've done it a little bit already for certain extra qualifications, but now the idea is going big time.

Here's what our Legislature passed in its spring session:

• Every school district in Florida has to come up with its own plan by Dec. 31 for paying teachers according to their performance.

•  One teacher out of every four will be chosen to get at least a 5 percent salary bump.

•  To measure performance, school districts should use standardized test scores to measure learning gains where possible. Where that isn't possible, the district has to come up with other ways of measuring teachers.

• The state will review each district's plan and accept it or ask for changes.

•  The Legislature set aside $147.5-million in extra pay to get things started.

 Lastly, if a school district doesn't want to take part, the money will be redistributed among the remaining districts.

The plan has a catchy name: Special Teachers Are Rewarded, or STAR. It replaces a version of performance pay passed by the state Board of Education earlier in the spring.

STAR is a huge deal for Florida, for a lot of reasons. It upsets the apple cart. It weakens the role of teacher unions, which escapes no one's notice on either side of the issue.

Merit pay is the last big piece of Bush's plan for changing education in Florida.

"Does anyone believe,'' the governor asked me in an exchange of e-mails, "that every teacher achieves the same results? Who can deny that there are great teachers and mediocre ones?

"Every parent knows this. We are not threatening the collective bargaining process. We are simply saying that there should be additional rewards above and beyond for a job well done.''

I had a detailed talk with John Winn, the state commissioner of education. I asked him about the major objections I have heard from teachers.

First, Winn agreed that teachers should have a level playing field. The teacher with the most challenging kids should have the same chance, relatively speaking, as a teacher with the most gifted.

Second, Winn surprised me by admitting at once the teachers' second-biggest complaint: that the tools aren't in place to judge teachers whose fields are not directly related to standardized tests.

That, Winn said, is the point: It's time to try to develop those tools. The purpose of STAR is for each school district to propose an objective measure of the work done by music teachers, librarians, media specialists, guidance counselors and so forth.

"We are at the beginning of this road," he said.

My own prejudice has been to side with teachers and to be skeptical of overreliance on standardized tests. But the teachers' objections always have been expressed in terms of potentially unfair situations - not the philosophy of performance pay.

So from a strategic standpoint, STAR is brilliant. The proof of the pudding now shifts to the individual plans developed by Florida's school districts over the coming months. That will be the battlefield on which teachers must argue that performance pay is fair or unfair.

Until now, Florida's teachers have overwhelmingly opposed change. It will be interesting to see, once a sizable chunk of them are getting that extra 5 percent or better, how unified that opposition remains.

[Last modified June 4, 2006, 05:42:33]