BTU Contract Under Review, Merit Pay?

Earlier this week Baltimore City Public Schools announced that negotiations for a new contract between BTU and the school district are ongoing; for the time being, the city will use the contract from the 2009-2010 school year until the details of the current contract are fleshed out. Many changes that Dr. Alonso is pushing for arose from a third party evaluation/consultation of the school district performed in June. The evaluation suggested that teachers’ pay be increased; however, it also criticized the current contract for its emphasis on tenure over performance as well as the city’s tendency to circulate unwanted yet tenured teachers rather than cutting ties with them. One of the most provocative reforms under scrutiny involves teacher pay. Dr. Alonso has suggested that the new contract will imbue a “remarkable re-conception of how teachers get paid." The city schools’ CEO has attempted to allay fears from critics by stating that teacher pay will reflect student growth rather than raw scores on a standardized test. How he plans to measure student growth was not mentioned.

Most of me likes the idea of merit based pay, at least in theory. I agree that basing pay solely on the number of years you have served a school district appears to give teachers no incentive to continually evaluate and improve upon their effectiveness. From the same standpoint, the current pay system does not reward the best teachers for their amazing efforts. In other words, to the best of my knowledge, I do not know of any incentive based bonuses that Baltimore City currently offers. Some critics to the possible change in the pay scale cite reasons that usually shift responsibility. Others cite the idea that not every subject is evaluated with a standardized test. And part of me does seriously question the degree to which human nature will be involved, especially pertaining to teacher evaluations for those educators who teach non-tested subjects. Suppose an amazing art teacher butts heads with her principal and severs their relationship. I guess you could set up some system for appeal and encourage teachers to preserve both student created and teacher created artifacts that can be used as evidence for their effectiveness. An extremely convoluted situation remains, nonetheless.