Is the tide turning?

By Liam Day
May 7th, 2008

First the American Federation of Teachers tilted that way, then local districts began implementing it and then, what’s worse, some local districts even began implementing it in conjunction with local unions. Now, at long last, it appears some education leaders in Massachusetts are finally open to the idea.

Yesterday, current chair of the state Board of Education and incoming Ed. Secretary Paul Reville discussed the need for a differential system of compensation for public school teachers. As reported by the Globe:

“The larger challenge is to take on the monolithic pay notion and differentiate pay based on skill, knowledge, and assignment, and establish a concept that everyone doesn’t have to be paid in the same lock step and lanes,” said Reville, who will become Patrick’s education secretary in July.

Now, he did not go so far as to advocate merit pay for individual teachers based on their students’ performance on the MCAS, but, nonetheless, it’s a start.

This is an issue quite close to my heart. As a teacher, I was never so frustrated by anything as by the fact that no matter how hard I worked, no matter how well I did my job, I was getting paid exactly the same as everyone else in my building, even if they raced the kids out of school at the end of the day and their idea of class prep was photocopying endless reams of worksheets.

To attract and retain the best teachers, we need to implement merit pay. No ands, ifs or buts. And for a model of how it can be implemented, we need only look to Denver, where a system of merit pay that combines individual teacher bonuses with bonuses based on the performance of entire schools was implemented with support from the teachers’ union. That radical right-wing rag, Time Magazine (Are you catching my sarcasm? Good, ’cause I’m laying it on pretty thick.), ran a cover story on it just this winter.

Merit pay is clearly an idea whose time has come.