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Published Thursday, January 20, 2011 in Local

There's talk of merit pay for teachers through Race to the Top program

By Jeff Bishop

The Newnan Times-Herald

Merit pay for school teachers is creeping back into this conversation -- this time through the Race to the Top grant.

State school officials explained at a media symposium that Race to the Top will serve as a kind of pilot program for merit pay, which may be implemented as soon as four years from now. The Coweta County School System is not among the systems taking part in Georgia's RTTT pilot, but the merit pay experiment could eventually become the norm throughout the state.

Current teachers would have the option of moving into the new merit pay plan or remaining with the current tiered pay scale, which is based on education levels and years of experience.

Georgia Teacher of the Year for 2011 Pam Williams said she understands merit pay proposals "make many teachers nervous," but she said that there are some advantages to implementing a merit pay system.

"I think teachers do want to know that everyone is being held to some measure of accountability," Williams said at the media symposium, held at Georgia Public Television in Atlanta.

"We want to know that everyone is working hard," Williams said. "I think this will level the playing field."

Will merit pay make a classroom teacher's job even more difficult?

"Not if you do your job," she said.

Two jurisdictions that originally were supposed to participate in the Race to the Top program declined to do so, and they pointed to the merit pay provisions as the main reason.

A salary system not based on tenure -- experience and academic degrees -- was part of Georgia's original proposal to get the federal dollars.

Jones County decided to turn down the $573,000 it would have earned as one of the 26 Georgia counties in the $400 million federal grant program.

The school system found out about the stipulations during an orientation with the state board last fall.

"We obviously don't like to refuse money," said Jones County Board of Education Chairwoman Deloras Moon at the time, "but so much of our school improvement plan for the past five years has had to do with working with groups of people. It would have been more divisive than beneficial and not encourage the teachers."

Local teachers have generally been unsupportive of merit pay proposals in the past, arguing that such salary systems discourage collaboration among teachers and discourage people from working with special needs students, who may not achieve as much as fast as other students.

Questions have also been raised about how counselors and media specialists -- who do not have a classroom of students to be tested -- would be paid. If they are paid based on school performance, those personnel would likely jockey to get into schools where achievement generally is high.

The Race to the Top fund is a $4 billion grant within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to support new approaches to improve schools. The ARRA money is available in the form of competitive grants to encourage and reward states that are creating conditions for education innovation and reform, specifically implementing ambitious plans in four education reform areas:

n adopting standards and assessments that prepare students to succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy;

n building data systems that measure student growth and success, and inform teachers and principals about how they can improve instruction;

n recruiting, preparing, rewarding and retaining effective teachers and principals, especially where they are needed most;

n turning around the country's lowest-achieving schools.

Over 20 local school districts in Georgia have signed on to partner with the state in implementing the new Race to the Top plan. Coweta is not directly a part of Race to the Top, although it is eligible for some limited funding through the grant.

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Merit Pay

7/25/2011