Tennessee School Districts to Administer Teacher Incentives

Natalia Mielczarek:

State-mandated bonuses to help recruit tough-to-find teachers and reward great ones will look different from district to district in Tennessee.

Much-awaited guidelines out last month from the state Board of Education are broad — basically, they direct districts to put in place some sort of plan and launch it by the start of the 2008-09 school year.

That differs from other states experimenting with pay-for-performance. In Texas, for instance, some rewards are tied to specific student achievement on standardized tests. Those behind the Tennessee law say there's good reason to keep it flexible enough for districts to explore options.

"The best chance for it to have a positive impact is to have those plans bubble up from the system level," said Gary Nixon, executive director of the state Board of Education. "They'll have to work with their teachers' associations to come up with a plan that works for them. It's better than it coming from the state."

Teachers unions, which will have to approve the plans in districts where they have bargaining power, opposed the measure in the legislature last year. They said it didn't address the underlying issue of low teacher pay and may not be fair.

Sen. Joe Haynes, D-Goodlettsville, who serves on the state legislature's education committee, said pay incentives have merit if they're distributed correctly.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 10, 2008 12:00 AM
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