Merit pay for St. Louis attached to education bill
JEFFERSON CITY — In an early morning vote that had to be done not once, but twice, the Missouri Senate today passed a bill that would allow teachers in the city of St. Louis to leave the traditional tenure track and qualify for performance-based pay.
The measure, sponsored by Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, and supported by St. Louis Democrat Jeff Smith, would use money from gambling proceeds to create a pool of up to $5 million to pay teachers who qualify based on their performance to earn more each year than their colleagues who stick with the tenure system.
Cunningham’s amendment passed on a voice vote and was attached to the omnibus education bill that passed the Senate at 2:30 this morning after about 8 hours of debate.
The underlying bill altered the foundation formula to accept the additional gambling proceeds expected to flow into education because of the ballot measure passed in November that erased loss limits in Missouri casinos.
But the most contentious debate was on Cunningham’s measure, and other amendments that had to do with making changes to the traditional public school model.
Cunningham’s amendment was vehemently opposed by pro-teachers-union Democrats in the Senate, led by Sen. Joan Bray of University City and Rita Days of St. Louis. But neither Bray or Days were in the chamber when Cunningham’s measure came up for debate and it passed quietly. But Cunningham had drafted the measure incorrectly, so Senate president pro tem Charlie Shields called senators back into the chamber to rescind the amendment, fix it, and then try to pass it again.
By that time, Bray was engaged, and in about an hour long debate, she blasted fellow Democrat Smith for his support of the measure. Smith pointed to merit based pay systems in Chicago and New York and Denver that he said were successful.
“I want to try to provide tools that will help my district succeed,” Smith said.
The bill passed easily on a voice vote.
Senators defeated a measure that would have allowed school districts to go to a 4-day school week in a debate that pitted rural lawmakers vs. urban ones. And after a long debate, senators dropped a measure that would have brought open enrollment to Missouri, and instead decided to study it and have a committee issue a report on open enrollment by the end of the year.
Lord knows, it might lead to calamity if we actually evaluate teachers based on their performance!
Seriously though, other than “the unions don’t like it because it means some of their members who don’t perform well will lose their jobs”, what possible reason is there for opposing such a system??
Good for Sen Smith. This makes me wonder how my own senator, Robin Wright-Jones, voted.
There are legitimate reasons to reject ‘performance-based’ compensation for teachers. Basically, it comes down to how you rate performance. The typical way to measure performance is testing, but it is fraught with problems. Test results can be (and often are) cooked by schools and teachers alike. Also, the tests are constantly modified and it is unclear whether tests really measure student performance and if they can be used to track year-to-year. Finally, teachers in districts with more difficult students may be unfairly punished in such a system. Remember, teachers don’t teach the same kids throughout their educations. Districts with ongoing demographics changes or high rates of at-risk children will have the deck stacked against them.
If it’s a good idea than do it statewide. When lawmakers sponsor bills that affect districts other than their own only, doesn’t anyone else wonder why if it’s such a good idea they don’t want it for their own constituents?
Performance pay is something our schools, children, and teachers need. Have you ever looked at the teacher pay schedule? The more time there, the more they are paid. It does not look at whether they are doing it well. Imagine one teacher who had been teaching for 15 years…tired and burnt out a little. This teacher might start to teach ineffectively and simply not care as much anymore. But, it doesn’t really matter, that teacher will continue to get raises no matter how much or how little the children are learning.
Now, imagine another teacher, been there for 7 years, but is doing amazing things with those students. The students are thriving at great levels. This teacher has a gift, a gift of being able to communicate well with students and make them want to learn. Yet, this teacher gets paid much less. What happens if all the teachers like this decide to find employment elsewhere because they are never rewarded for their good job? Then, we are stuck with the teachers not doing a good job? Now, I am not saying this is the case with every teacher, but both scenarios happen more often than you might think.
Most jobs are based on performance..don’t you want the people teaching your most loved children going by the same standards?
Granted, there might be flaws with performance pay, but I know they will be many fewer and smaller flaws than our current system.
If you do some research, you will find that many examples of merit pay for teachers have been tried in the past 100 years. No experiment has lasted more than a few years. The reasons that they fail are legion and, unless these latest attempts are significantly different and address all the reasons merit pay has failed in the past, they will soon be confined to the dustbin.
For once, Ms. Wessling and I agree! I think that merit pay is a good idea as long as teachers are evaluated based on the gains their students make while under their instruction. I’m glad to see that my Senator voted for it. And, as Ms. Wessling pointed out, if it’s a good idea for one community, it should be available to any community that wants to try it.
I will add that I’m very disappointed to see that open enrollment got voted down. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - my taxes go to support all of St. Louis’s public schools. I should be able to choose which one of them is best for my kids instead of being stuck with the ones for which I’m zoned.
A lot of comments have talked about how unfair it might be for teachers who have difficult, undereducated or disadvantaged students. They have mentioned that the metric or rubric may be unfair to certain teachers. They have said testing is “fraught with problems”. Now, replace the word “teacher” with the word “student”. It is unfair to students to have an undereducated teacher. Sometimes student testing is fraught with problems, and the metrics are unfair–but we still make students take standardized tests before they graduate or advance.
Our ultimate responsibility as taxpayers, lawmakers, citizens is to the education of students, not the employment of teachers. If we ask children to be tested, why not those who are paid to teach them the subject matter?
But here’s the kicker: this is OPTIONAL. If a teacher wants to stay in the tenure track, they are more than welcome to. But, especially for young teachers who are far from tenure but still very capable, this is a way for them to be compensated for excellent teaching–which is what we want and a measurement that they have voluntarily agreed to.
“If it’s a good idea than do it statewide.” It is THEN - NOT THAN Ms Wessling. Perhaps your grammer would be better, had your teachers been rewarded with merit pay.
My grammar is pretty good, as my cum laude degree in English attests; perhaps my typing teacher should have been the one with merit pay