Governor pushes to advance merit pay to the chagrin of teachers
by Rusty Rothenbuescher
AUSTIN - Increasing wages for teachers has been a hot topic in the Texas capitol for several years, but Gov. Perry's plan to expand the merit pay program has drawn severe criticism from an unlikely source - teachers.
In May 2006 during a special session, the Legislature enacted the Texas Educator Excellence Grant Program. The program allocated $100 million of state funds to school districts across the state for creating and implementing merit pay plans. In the 2007-2009 proposed biennium budget, the governor's office increases the program to $582 million.
Houston ISD was one of the first districts to develop and implement a merit pay scheme. The district administration jumpstarted the Legislature's approval acting on Gov. Perry's November 2005 executive mandate and drew up what has become the largest merit pay program in the state.
But the fledgling program found itself under fire this February when Houston teachers began receiving the bonuses. At a Houston ISD school board meeting on Feb. 11, more than 100 teachers arrived to protest what Houston Federation of Teachers President Gayle Fallon called a "flawed and divisive" merit pay program. Some of the disgruntled teachers present at the meeting were actually recipients of the bonuses.
In a recent press release the Texas Federation of Teachers panned the Houston ISD plan noting that many of the district’s "teachers of the year" received no merit bonus and poor performing teachers on growth plans found themselves on the receiving end of merit pay.
"Teachers who are consistently high performing and work in high performing districts are left out of the equation," said State Rep. Juan Garcia (D – Corpus Christi).
Under the Houston ISD plan and the state's suggested framework bonuses are awarded primarily on TAKS improvements - not TAKS pass rates, but gains on TAKS scores. So if you are a constant performer from year to year on a consistently performing campus, you are unlikely to see a bonus. It is this paradox that has many teachers up in arms.
Not everyone sees this as unjust. Jamie Story, education analyst for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, believes the largest benefit of Educator Excellence program is to reward teachers who choose to work in high-needs areas. "There is so little incentive for to work in these [poor-performing] schools," said Story. "Any scheme that offers differentiated pay for teachers is good."
Story also stressed that under Perry's plan districts have leverage to develop the assessment tool locally. "These programs are best decided at the local level making them more comparable to the private sector," said Story.
But Debra Haas, visiting professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs in Austin, sees grave flaws in this thinking. Haas runs her own consulting firm specializing in education policy.
"Developing an assessment program takes time and money," Haas said, adding that public schools are short on both. Even when school districts are willing to draft their own merit pay assessments, Haas claims state lawmakers are "not willing to let a district take control and experiment." According to Haas, "If you stray too far from the prescribed program then yourre not focusing on the test, which is how the state gets evaluated by the federal government." And those evaluations lead to funding.
Haas argued that rather than incentive programs, the best plan would be to pay teachers their "societal worth." She compares the public good obtained from public education and the teaching profession analogous to nursing or engineering.
"Nurses can expect to begin their career making approximately $40,000 annually and engineers upwards of $50,000 while a first-year teacher in Texas will earn $27,000," said Haas. "After 20 years, nurses will be in the $75,000 plus range" and engineers can easily bank six digits by this point. Teachers, after educating some 1,000 children, will be earning $44,270.
So Haas asks, "If we value teachers so much why aren’t we paying them a wage that conveys that message?"
She believes doing so would make the profession more attractive, drawing more people into the field and allowing a higher level of accountability. If wages are commensurate to the job, school districts can expect a higher quantity and quality pool of prospects. Those currently in the profession will naturally strive for higher levels of success knowing a replacement is readily available, and school administrations will not feel as strapped to retain low performing teachers.
"Any change would be an improvement over the current system," said Story. Increasing the minimum starting salary for all of Texas' educators, by say $5,000, would require an additional $1 billion per year. Story and Haas agree the main obstacle to such a massive overhaul is the age-old saga of finding the money.