Texas Teachers Reject Test Score Bounty Awards

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

50 SCHOOLS REJECT GRANTS FOR MERIT PAY PROGRAMS

Dallas Morning News -- November 3, 2006
by Terrence Stutz

Fifty Texas schools have rejected state grants to establish merit pay 
programs for their teachers this year, signaling their disapproval of a 
new law that offers bonuses to teachers for higher student test scores.

Texas Education Agency officials said Thursday that the 50 campuses have 
turned down grants ranging from $40,000 to $120,000 that would have been 
provided under the $100 million incentive pay plan approved by the 
Legislature this year.

Debbie Ratcliffe, a spokeswoman for the TEA, said that 1,119 schools 
decided to participate and will award bonuses of $3,000 to $10,000 based 
largely on results from the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills 
next spring. Individual grants to schools will range from $40,000 to 
$300,000 in what is believed to be the largest teacher merit pay program 
in the nation.

"We still have a 97 percent response rate for the program – and that is 
very high," she said. "A lot of our grant programs don't have anywhere 
near that kind of participation by schools."

Although schools rejecting the Texas Educator Excellence Grants did not 
have to give a reason, Ms. Ratcliffe said many said no because teachers 
opposed the idea or because administrators were reluctant to decide who 
should get a bonus and who shouldn't.

The grant rejections were somewhat puzzling, she said, since teachers 
could have donated bonuses to their schools if they felt it was unfair 
to financially reward some teachers and not others on the same campus.

But teachers at schools opposed to merit pay said it was not worth the 
extra money to break up the team spirit among teachers and spend time 
filling out paperwork for the program.

"We felt that doing all the things required for this program would take 
too much time," said Mary Vasquez, a second grade teacher at Bellaire 
Elementary School in Hurst, which turned down a $90,000 grant.

"We would rather dedicate all our time to teaching the kids and building 
relationships with them."

TEA officials said other campuses were offered the grant money that the 
50 schools turned down, but about $4.5 million allocated for the 
incentive pay program is still available. That money will be awarded 
later in the school year.

The agency is also still reviewing each school's plan for awarding the 
bonuses and will approve those plans over the next few months. While 
schools had to follow state guidelines in setting up their plans, they 
were given leeway in designing the proposals – including the size of 
individual bonuses and how many teachers should be eligible for the money.

Bonuses of $3,000 to $10,000 will be distributed between May 1 and Oct. 
15 next year. The amount is significant as the average teacher salary in 
Texas last year was just under $42,000.

Although the concept of merit pay is largely untested in public schools, 
the Legislature voted in May to establish the biggest merit pay plan in 
the nation, earmarking $100 million for teacher bonuses this school year 
and another $260 million next year.

The state grants this year have been targeted at schools with a high 
percentage of low-income students that also earned one of the two 
highest performance ratings from the state – exemplary or recognized. At 
least 75 percent of each school's grant must be distributed to classroom 
teachers.

The 1,119 campuses participating in the program represent about 14 
percent of the regular schools and independent charter schools in the 
state.