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Teacher reaction mixed, they say. I'll bet it is! What do you all think?

Houston to tie teachers' pay to test scores

Friday, January 13, 2006; Posted: 9:36 a.m. EST (14:36 GMT)

HOUSTON, Texas (AP) -- Houston became the largest school district in the country on Thursday to adopt a merit pay plan for teachers that focuses on students' tests scores.

By a 9-0 vote, the Houston school board approved a plan that offers teachers as much as $3,000 in extra pay if their students improve on state and national tests. The program could be expanded to provide as much as $10,000 in merit pay for teachers.

The vote came after several teachers told the board at its monthly meeting they believed the plan was flawed and unfair because some teachers will be eligible for larger bonuses than others.

...

The plan is divided into three sections, with as much as $1,000 in bonus pay tied to each.

The first will award bonuses to all teachers in schools rated acceptable or higher, based on scores on the state's main standardized test. The second ties pay to student improvement on a standardized test that compares performance to nationwide norms.

In the third section, reading and math teachers whose students fare well compared with others in the district would be eligible for bonuses.

The teachers' union doesn't approve of the plan, saying it focuses too much on test scores and is too complicated.

"Any time you divide one set of teachers from another, you are sending the wrong message," said Jana Angelov, a high school art teacher who has been with the district for eight years.

Ben Hernandez, 30, a kindergarten teacher who helped design the plan, said that even though he does not like the focus on test scores, he believes the plan will be a good way to reward teachers for hard work.

"If I am to continue to be successful as an educator, I must change," he said. "The system must change also. This proposal is a change from the past, a change for the better."

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This is one of those ideas that makes sense to my conservative side (it's a small side, I know, but it's there. Really.). That is, people who are really dedicated and really good should be properly compensated for the quality of their work, and people who are less competent, less committed, and just not as good at what they do, should also be compensated appropriately--as in getting less.

But that's a notion that works out nicely in theory and is very tricky to apply. It seems to demand a very clear set of criteria for determining how to measure quality. Otherwise, the system wouldn't be fair and might easily be used and abused in an arbitrary fashion. On the other hand, I lack faith that any system which is firm and clear enough to be fair can have any real relationship to quality, which is simply unquantifiable and perhaps undefineable. So it may be that to the extent the system is fair, it will do as much to confound quality as to support it.

The question, to me, becomes: Do the negative consequences of tying teacher performance to pay outweigh the possible benefits? I think the answer is yes, but I'd be interested in attempts to persuade me otherwise.