McCain Pumps Up Teaching Benefit

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who frequently laments that a “good teacher earns less than a bad senator,” is fine-tuning an ambitious $1-billion-a-year plan to reward the “best” teachers in America with a federal tax cut that could lop 25% off their tax bills, campaign aides said Saturday.

The proposal by the Arizona senator could benefit up to 1 million of the country’s 3.1 million public and private elementary and high school teachers, the aides said, though they added that it remains unclear whether the final plan will include instructors at private schools.

The plan would be paid for, the aides said, by closing tax loopholes enjoyed by corporations and other special interest groups--a key element of McCain’s campaign. He already has promised to fund health care reforms in part by eliminating these tax breaks.

“Rather than providing tax breaks and loopholes for special interests, we want to offer relief for the men and women who teach our children every day,” said Dan Schnur, the McCain campaign’s communications director. “Just because a teacher who makes $30,000 a year can’t afford a million-dollar lobbyist doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to reward them for their excellent work.”

Schnur said that the proposal’s final details are still being hammered out and that the candidate expects to unveil it in mid-January, shortly before the key Feb. 1 primary in New Hampshire, where McCain has carved out a slight lead in the polls over Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the GOP front-runner.

“This is a work in progress,” Schnur said. “But the basic principle, rewarding teachers, is an important one.”

Polls consistently have ranked education at the top of voters’ concerns. And McCain is the first Republican candidate to so directly target teachers for financial benefits.

Among the Democrats, former Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey has proposed financial incentives to those who choose to teach in poor rural or inner-city schools. Vice President Al Gore would offer signing bonuses for teachers recruited from other professions and raises for instructors in impoverished school districts that take aggressive steps to improve teaching standards.

McCain’s plan would give states wide discretion in implementing the tax-break plan. For instance, the states would devise the testing and assessment methods for determining which teachers qualified for the tax breaks.

Measuring performance would also be left to the states. An aide said states could compensate for the often poor resources of inner-city schools by basing the measurement of teachers’ performances on improvement shown by students rather than on students’ scores on standardized tests.

Those teachers ranked as the best by the states would be eligible for the 25% tax credit, the highest offered. Other teachers could qualify for smaller tax breaks.

Leaders of teachers’ unions were critical of the plan.

“Teachers should not be judged against each other but on a standard of performance individually,” said Kathleen Lyons, spokeswoman for the National Education Assn., the country’s largest teachers’ union.

The McCain plan, she said, “would require the states to judge two teachers who might be doing an outstanding job and say that one is doing a better job than the other.”

Sandra Feldman, president of the other major union, the American Federation of Teachers, said the proposal was “not the kind of comprehensive plan we need to turn around low-performing schools in high-poverty urban and rural districts.”

Schnur countered that there was “no reason for teachers to be pitted against one another.”

He added: “Our goal is simply to encourage excellence in students, and one of the best ways to accomplish this is to reward excellence among teachers.”

Widespread concern over the performance of public schools has prompted most of the candidates to outline the steps they would take to improve education.

Bush would provide federal education funds directly to students at public schools that fail to meet standards over three years. The money then could be used for private school tuition or tutors.

Publisher Steve Forbes, another GOP candidate, favors immediately providing families with federal education money that could be used for private school attendance.

These types of programs are a popular GOP school reform prescription that teachers’ unions strongly oppose.

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Associated Press contributed to this story.