Good Teachers, Better Pay

The future of the Los Angeles public schools will depend largely on the next labor contract between the district and United Teachers-Los Angeles. For the first time, the district would link pay to performance. Teachers union officials strongly decry the plan as unfair: Some have asked, for example, why teachers should be penalized if a Spanish-speaking student does poorly on an English test. It’s a question that gives a reasonable person pause--but it’s also a question that falsely characterizes the “merit pay” issue.

The teachers’ contract expires at the end of June, and the school district will ask the school board to approve its initial proposal Tuesday. In a nutshell, United Teachers-Los Angeles wants a 21% raise next school year for the district’s 43,000 teachers. Under the district plan, proposed by interim Supt. Ruben C. Cortines and Chief Operating Officer Howard Miller, teachers would receive a 4.2% salary boost in the first year and an additional raise would be negotiated for the second year of the contract. But a bigger sticking point is the merit pay proposal. Los Angeles Unified is the first large district in California to push such a proposal, though Georgia, North Carolina and Connecticut have approved some form of extra pay for teachers.

Under the Cortines plan, teachers would be rewarded with bonuses and extra pay if their schools made significant progress on the Stanford 9 test and other indicators to be negotiated and if their schools exceeded state academic improvement goals. The proposed school-based incentive plan would encourage faculty collaboration. In this plan, no teacher would lose money. But those excelling would earn more.

Teachers would also qualify for up to a $3,000 bonus at the district’s lowest-performing schools if those campuses met their target on the state’s Academic Performance Index. That goal is set on the basis of past performance. The worst school could remain in the lowest category and still meet the goal if students made sufficient progress. This proposal would put the district’s highest priority right where it belongs, on rewarding academic achievement. In its proposal, the district is neither demanding nor expecting a teacher to make a low-achieving student into an academic star overnight. For example, the district proposal does not seek a miraculous leap from the 15th percentile to the 80th percentile. The district asks a modest schoolwide advance each year toward a statewide target score. If a school meets the goal, all teachers in that school would get a bonus for that year. If not, teachers would still receive the standard annual raise, yet to be negotiated. Why would the union oppose such modest aspirations? Does it not believe in its members--or in the students?

The district also would pay more to science and math teachers who majored in their subjects and were certified in their specialties. These teachers are among the hardest to find because of competition from the private sector. Special education teachers, who also are scarce, would get higher pay too. Expert reading teachers should earn much more than an uncertified teacher who doesn’t know the first thing about phonics but has the same number of years of classroom experience. Skill and expertise tailored to the district’s instructional needs and priorities should be rewarded.

The looming battle is largely over money, of course. But this conflict is also as much philosophical as it is fiscal. Is teaching a craft? Or is it a profession? Teachers are college-educated professionals and should be treated as such. They should receive differential salaries and significant raises based on their expertise and performance, not primarily on how many years they have spent in front of a classroom. UTLA officials would agree that teachers with advanced degrees, specialties and many years of service should be paid much more, but they draw a hard line at merit pay.

Overall, of course, teachers should make more money. School districts get what they pay for, and the LAUSD salary scale is among the lowest in Los Angeles County. Staying competitive and keeping good teachers will require higher pay, given the statewide teacher shortage and the challenging working conditions on many L.A. campuses.

But the teachers union can no longer deny the role that many of its members have had in the failure of public schools. Union protections have allowed poor teachers to move from campus to campus, escaping accountability. Very few teachers are suspended or given unsatisfactory evaluations, though test scores, low grades and other indicators of massive failure show there must be more than a few ineffective ones. These teachers should be helped to do a better job or shown the door.

Teachers have plenty of valid concerns. Many believe they are unfairly blamed for factors they cannot control in the classroom. Teachers also point to school district headquarters, saying that years of mismanagement and waste have contributed to poor student achievement. Past administrations funded faddish programs, blew $175 million on the now-abandoned Belmont Learning Complex and hid resources that could have been used in the classroom.

Over the years, the LAUSD has provided dozens of reasons to give up on public schools. Administrative ineptitude, however, doesn’t relieve educators of the responsibility for what goes on in the classroom. Cortines and Miller want to link the vast resources of the district to student achievement. They want to restore authority to principals to organize their schools and assign teachers. They want professional development determined by what teachers and students needs. They also want to validate teachers who routinely prove that all children can learn.

UTLA’s threat to strike over its objection to merit pay puts the union out of sync with parents and the rest of working Americans, most of whom receive raises or bonuses based on work performance. Teachers should insist on reasonable measures of performance. But for the teachers union to blindly oppose “merit pay” hands over the greatest political weapons that teachers possess: the natural goodwill and sympathy of the public.