Teachers upset by Perdue's merit pay plan

ATLANTA — Gov. Sonny Perdue’s push to overhaul the way teachers are paid is being widely panned by teachers.

Many say it won’t work. And many say they don’t understand the proposal, largely because its details are unwritten, despite the fact that it’s moving forward at the state Capitol.

Simply put, the governor wants to tie teacher pay to student achievement. But the effort is “like building the wings on the airplane as it’s rolling down the runway,” said Tim Callahan, spokesman for the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, which has major problems with the proposal, too. PAGE represents some 80,000 teachers in Georgia.

The Georgia Association of Educators, which has 40,000 members, also has problems with the plan and is working on an alternative.

“We’ve not had a single member reach us in support of (Perdue’s plan),” GAE President Jeff Hubbard said.

Likewise, when The Telegraph reached out to current and retired teachers in Middle Georgia, none of them said they supported the change. Of the 20-plus educators interviewed, the closest any came to supporting the plan was to think the idea had some merit, though the details left a lot to be desired.

“I am in favor in some sort of salary increase based on student achievement in theory, but I think you’re going to have to be very careful with how you gauge ‘achievement,’’’ Baldwin County High School teacher Will Dennison said. “The criteria will have to be based on some sort of student growth, and it will have to be fair across all subjects, locations and student levels. I’m not sure how realistic that is.”

Perdue is no stranger to criticism when it comes to education. He has tried to overhaul the way public schools are funded for years, pushing for a new Quality Basic Education formula to determine how much money individual systems should get from the state. Unable to implement that major change, Perdue and the state Legislature have made incremental ones.

Now, in the last year of his final term as governor, Perdue is going again for a big change, and he’s got a sizable carrot as he tries to prod the system toward change: $400 million or more in federal money. That’s what the state and 23 volunteer systems, including Bibb and Jones counties, stand to gain if Georgia wins the federal Race to the Top contest. Georgia was announced last week as one of 16 finalist states in that contest, and the 23 systems could use the federal money to implement a pilot program to showcase Perdue’s new pay plan.

Then, starting in 2014 — well after Perdue leaves office — teachers would be offered a choice. They could stay in the current pay system, which includes salary steps, cost-of-living increases and extra pay for advanced degrees, or they could opt for the new one.

New teachers wouldn’t have a choice. They would move into the new system. That system would set teacher pay based on a variety of factors not fully fleshed out. Peer review would be involved. So would administrative review by principals. But the most controversial aspect is student achievement. Teachers whose students improve the most over the course of a year would be paid the most.

But how all that would work isn’t yet set and won’t be until well after the governor’s plan — contained in Senate Bill 386 — passes the Legislature, if it passes at all. The bill is in the Senate’s Education and Youth Committee, which is scheduled to meet Tuesday afternoon.

Details of how teachers would be graded would be set by the State Board of Education with input, the governor has promised, from teachers themselves.

Last week, as he announced that Georgia was a finalist in the Race to the Top competition, Perdue said he understands that teachers are worried about the change. He noted again that they will be able to choose whether to be part of the new system and that “I would not ask them to choose until they understand the metrics.”

Teachers’ primary concern with the system seems to be that so much of student achievement is out of their control. It’s tied to parental involvement, each student’s innate ability and the job teachers in previous grades have done.

There are concerns that office politics will affect which teachers get the best students and which ones get the worst. There are concerns that “teaching to the test” and cheating will become bigger problems than they already are if teachers know their salaries are on the line.

Teachers told The Telegraph they’re worried the new system will mean fewer teachers willing to teach children with special needs. And some 70 percent of Georgia teachers teach subjects such as music or physical education. There are no tests to gauge student achievement there, making student, parent, peer and principal evaluations more important in those subjects.

Some of the teachers interviewed had advanced degrees, though most did not. Either way, the consensus was that these degrees were often valuable, but by no means do they guarantee that a teacher would do a better job.

Altogether, teachers said they don’t trust this proposal. But Perdue is pushing forward, and he has sought to assuage the biggest fear teachers seem to have about the proposal: that under-performing students will drag down an individual teacher’s pay.

One class of students won’t be compared to another, he said. They will be compared to themselves.

“It’s the progress they make while they’re in that classroom,” Perdue said.