California Teacher Incentive Pay Plan

Developing incentive pay plans are a challenge. Gov. Schwarzenegger is pushing this in California. Dan Weintraub writes:

Everyone knows that our poorest kids tend to clump in schools that depend too much on inexperienced teachers, many of whom are still trying to find their way in the profession. We have good, experienced teachers who would teach in these schools if they were rewarded financially for their trouble – just as in every other profession, where the toughest-to-fill jobs normally earn higher pay. So who or what is standing in the way of the students who need better teachers getting those teachers? The teachers unions.

Connecting the dots Gov. Schwarzenegger today again mentioned his support for incentive pay for teachers in schools serving a high number of disadvantaged kids – and again showed how politically tone deaf he is on the education issue. Schwarzenegger has rightly portrayed the teachers unions as part of the problem in the public schools. And for that – and his budget policies – he has been painted as anti-teacher by his opponents. But here is an issue that is pro-teacher and, more importantly, pro kid. Not only pro-kid but pro-poor-kid. And he just can’t seem to get himself to connect the dots.

Everyone knows that our poorest kids tend to clump in schools that depend too much on inexperienced teachers, many of whom are still trying to find their way in the profession. We have good, experienced teachers who would teach in these schools if they were rewarded financially for their trouble – just as in every other profession, where the toughest-to-fill jobs normally earn higher pay. So who or what is standing in the way of the students who need better teachers getting those teachers?

The teachers unions.

The unions refuse in almost all cases to negotiate contracts that allow one teacher to be paid more than another for any reason other than seniority and academic credentials. You can’t pay a math teacher more than an English teacher, and you can’t pay a teacher who works with hard-to-teach kids in the inner city more than a teacher who works with well-prepared middle-class kids in suburbia. The only notable exception to this is incentive pay for bilingual teachers, interestingly enough.

This looks like the tip of an enormous issue with the potential to expose the terrible bargain the Democrats in the Legislature have made with the teachers unions, to the detriment of the people they claim to represent. Schwarzenegger has taken the side of poor kids by advocating incentive pay. And he has taken on the teachers unions in general. What he hasn’t done is use the example of poor kids to explain to nonpolicy wonks exactly how the unions can be a destructive force in education.

Democrats and the CTA must be thanking their stars that he hasn’t figured this out. If he ever does, their unholy alliance might stop being such a huge advantage and instead become a massive political burden.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 26, 2005 7:34 AM
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