Bonus of Contention

New teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District have plenty of challenges to get used to: struggling students, dilapidated facilities, miles of red tape and inadequate supplies. They already earn less than veteran teachers, but that difference they understand. What they don’t understand is the bonus bait-and-switch: being told that if they helped raise student standardized test scores, they’d be rewarded, and then being told that their contribution would be measured strictly by seniority. What’s next? Bathroom breaks based on seniority?

This certainly is not the way Gov. Gray Davis and the California Legislature intended the new rewards program to work. They set up the incentives to encourage teachers to work together. The money would also reward teachers, who are among the lowest-paid public servants, and encourage them to stay at the state’s most challenging schools.

Teachers have been waiting nearly a year for the checks, which can range from $5,000 to as much as $25,000 per teacher, based on the Stanford 9 test given in 2000.

In most school districts eligible for bonuses, local unions agreed to distribute the state awards equally. But United Teachers-Los Angeles, which represents the district’s 38,000 teachers, refused to deal with any bonus program tied to test scores. State law required that, in the absence of union action, bonuses had to be distributed based on salary, which reflects the number of years a teacher has worked. UTLA President Day Higuchi argues that there is nothing fair about giving any group of teachers a big check based on rising scores on a single, standardized test. And, no matter how the pot is divided, he believes that some teachers will be angry. If every teacher gets the same check, senior teachers will complain that they deserved more because they have invested years improving a school and helping inexperienced teachers learn how to teach. New teachers who get smaller checks will complain that is not the deal the governor and Legislature promoted. Indeed it is not.

Extraordinarily accomplished teachers should be able to reap significantly better financial rewards, but try selling that to any school district that has to deal with rigid teachers unions.

The best the state could propose was an awards system that rewarded teachers equally after a school’s test scores jumped.

Seniority should not factor into these checks.