Free Republic

In Douglas County, Colorado, the front line of the fight for school choice and vouchers on the SCOTUS level, Republican voters outnumber Democrats about two to one. Yet until recently, Republican taxpayers .. paying about $1.25 million a year to fund Democrats’ political campaigns. How so? Most of the district’s 4,300 plus teachers belonged to the local American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union, to which they paid about $1.25 million in dues annually, according to the union’s IRS filings. Since teachers’ salaries are paid by the county’s property tax payers, their dues come out of those salaries. So the $1.25...

The recently expired Leslie Education Association teachers' union contract gave teachers $26.60 an hour if they substituted for another teacher. It paid teachers $467 if their day involved going to more than one building. The newly-approved contract will create a more comprehensive system that rewards teachers for being good at their job. In fact, the Leslie Public Schools district is using merit pay to benefit teachers in a manner that few others in the state have considered. The district in Ingham County created a committee made up of teachers, administrators and board members that will develop a "total merit pay...

Two more Michigan school districts have earned praise for implementing merit-based teacher pay. Blissfield Schools and the St. Clair intermediate school district join Oscoda and Suttons Bay in transitioning away from an industrial-era assembly line worker type compensation system to one that recognizes and rewards teachers as motivated professionals. There are reasons to think this may be the start of a trend. It’s estimated that 85 percent of school districts nationwide still use the outdated uniform single-salary schedule that pays teachers like factory workers, rewarding them only for years on the job and accumulating more pedagogic credentials and certifications. This...

Teachers, parents and education leaders are in Tallahassee Thursday fighting for education funding but there's another issue on their minds: a new merit pay evaluation system that could potentially change the way teachers are paid. "I think it's a good idea but the way it's being done is concerning me," Lawton Chiles Elementary School Principal Ian Gesundheit, said. Teachers would have to make the grade, being evaluated on the new system that would eliminate tenure and base teacher raises on how well students perform on standardized tests. More than 50 percent of a teacher's evaluation would be determined by student...

We're starting to understand what labor El Supremo Andy Stern meant when he called the Obama Administration a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to press the union agenda. Last month the Pentagon announced it would "review" a pay-for-performance system that now covers some 200,000 of its civilian employees, delaying any new entrants to the system. In short, merit pay for work well done. Fugettaboutit. House Democrats are now pushing to freeze pay for performance across the entire federal government. That's the upshot of a letter sent by eight House Democratic barons to White House budget chief Peter Orszag asking for...

In spelling out a vision for education reform in America, President Obama announced on Tuesday that he embraces merit pay for teachers (see related story). The head of Philadelphia's teachers' union says he backs Obama's proposal but wonders what the effects will be once the plan is fleshed out. Philadelphia Federation of Teachers president Jerry Jordan (right) says Obama's endorsement of merit pay for improved student perfomance doesn't go against what his union has been fighting for: "He talked about competitive salaries for teachers with innovative ways to reward teachers and experiences. We have been advocating those things at the...

One of the most ambitious pay-for-performance initiatives in Washington area schools is drawing strong teacher interest and local union support even though many national labor leaders have long asserted that it is unfair to link teachers' paychecks directly to their students' test scores.... ...The program's criteria exclude some teachers from certain bonus pools. Half of the bonus money is tied to scores on state tests given in third through eighth grades and in high school: Up to $2,500 is won when the school meets test score targets, and up to $2,500 is given for improving a given class's scores. The...

WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) - Performance-based merit pay for teachers is a bad idea, Hillary Rodham Clinton told Iowa teachers on Monday. School uniforms for kids, however, is worth looking at. Merit pay for teachers "could be demeaning and discouraging, and who would decide" who would receive it, she said in a meeting with teachers at Cunningham Elementary. "It would open a whole lot of problems." Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner nationally, is in a tight race with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards in Iowa. Merit pay is a clear point of disagreement with Obama....

Four San Antonio schools have rejected nearly $300,000 in bonus money for teachers because school leaders worried that the cash rewards would create dissention and ruin the atmosphere of teamwork at the schools. The schools — all in the San Antonio Independent School District — were eligible for the money because they serve primarily low-income students and post high test scores. The grants are part of a $100 million incentive pay program approved by the Legislature last year. Briscoe Academy, Highland Park, Hillcrest and Lamar elementary schools qualified for grants ranging from $45,000 to $90,000 per school. That would have...

Is there a bigger scandal in America than the low state of inner-city schools? Oprah Winfrey, utterly frustrated with the problem, last month discussed the $40 million she has spent building the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls--in South Africa. Ms. Winfrey said South African students want to learn, but in U.S. schools, "the sense that you need to learn just isn't there." Where'd it go? snip One measure of the tenure decision for New York City teachers would be their students' test scores. News accounts said the city teachers' union is "certain to fight" linking test scores to tenure....

WINTER HAVEN -- The modern reality of teaching in Florida schools makes Bess Lott, a 32-year veteran, wonder whether she'd choose teaching as a career if she had it to do over. Constant paperwork, comparatively low pay and FCAT pressure are all headaches, said the third-grade teacher at Winter Haven's Snively Elementary School of Choice. But e-comp, the Department of Education's performance pay proposal, is the final straw, she said. "They're talking about our salaries," she said....

Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) has proposed a package of education reforms--including merit pay for some public school teachers--for consideration this fall by the Massachusetts legislature. At press time, the legislature's Joint Committee on Education was expected to hold hearings on the proposal by the end of the year. "If we're serious about keeping our kids at the forefront of a highly challenging and competitive world economy, then we have to take the necessary steps to energize our education system," Romney said in a September 22 statement accompanying the new education proposals. The package of education reforms includes a program...

After seven years as the innovative and sometimes abrasive leader of California's second largest school district, Alan Bersin was run out of San Diego by the teachers' union. But you might say he landed on his feet. Bersin is now the education secretary for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. (snip) Bersin is a lifelong Democrat, a graduate of Harvard College, a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. He is a Yale-trained lawyer who worked as the border enforcement chief for the U.S. Department of Justice before serving as U.S. attorney in San Diego, and he was one of several non-educators to be hired to...

The administration wants to abolish the General Schedule pay system by 2010 and require that at least part of every pay raise for the government's 1.8 million civilian employees hinge on an annual performance evaluation, President Bush's top management guru said yesterday. ....break..... The administration's initiative faces significant hurdles on Capitol Hill. Key lawmakers have said the White House should not consider such sweeping measures until results are in from Homeland Security and Defense. The Government Accountability Office also has said that many agencies are not ready to carry out meaningful evaluations of their employees, a crucial component of the...

Revisiting the Merit Pay Issue It has been over a month since our article in support of merit pay for teachers was published in The Orange County Register. (Here it is republished in Intellectual Conservative for those who don't want to register for OCR.) The article was not well-received by other teachers at our school, but a huge majority of readers believed it was an issue worth exploring. Mark Hemingway presents a convincing case for merit pay in National Review Online today: To the extent that underpaid teachers are a problem, it is for one reason and one reason only:...

Merit pay? Please. We can develop a fair system that helps students and teachers alike By Ari J. Kaufman and Aaron Hanscom Teachers at Shenandoah Street Elementary School in Los Angeles. Their blog is www.partialtranscripts.blogspot.com All teachers are saints, incapable of succumbing to the baser instincts of human nature like laziness, selfishness or ingratitude. Of course, this assertion is as verifiably false as the statement that all car salesmen are honest, gracious and industrious. While teaching is still viewed as a noble profession, Californians can be forgiven for viewing their children's educators in an increasingly suspicious light. Recent infighting among...

Sacramento -- The committee supporting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's package of ballot initiatives said Friday that it will not have enough signatures to put a proposal for teacher merit pay on a November special election ballot. Allan Zaremberg, co-chairman of Citizens to Save California, said the idea to pay teachers based on merit instead of seniority is "lagging behind a little bit." Zaremberg did announce that the committee began turning in signatures for the governor's budget reform proposal Friday. Signatures for the governor's two other initiatives -- changing when a teacher can receive tenure and how legislative districts are drawn --...

The Schwarzenegger administration and Democrats are discussing a possible compromise to the governor's teacher merit pay proposal that would offer incentives to lure good teachers into the state's worst schools. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called the idea "combat pay." It is terminology that makes some educators cringe, but it is a concept that the governor's opponents also view as possible middle ground in the debate over teacher compensation. Merit pay for teachers, instead of step raises, was one of four key areas Schwarzenegger outlined in his call for overhauling state government this year. But some political experts see the issue...

It should surprise no one that Gov. Schwarzenegger wants to pay California teachers bashed on job performance. He has firsthand experience with merit pay, having earned millions for muscular box office appeal in his former career.

Denver teachers have voted to embrace a new pay plan that would stop rewarding them for years on the job and start recognizing specific skills and achievements in the classroom. Approval from the teachers' union puts the closely watched plan into the hands of Denver voters, who will be asked in 2005 for a property-tax increase to pay for the $25 million annual cost. Members of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association supported the proposal, written as part of the teachers' contract, by a decisive 59 percent to 41 percent. About 2,700 of the union's 3,200 members cast ballots. The 70,000-student...