Fred Klonsky’s PREA Prez Blog

Results are in for the merit pay plan agreed to by the union and the board in Hillsborough near Tampa, Florida.

A St. Petersburg Times investigation shows that almost three-fourths of the nearly 5,000 teachers who received merit pay worked at the county’s more affluent campuses.

Merit pay, aka pay-for-performance, ranks high on the Republican and Republicrat education reform agenda.

But the reliance on high-stakes tests, using a single day’s results, always have made the proposal problematic. The proponents of pay for performance, whether given to individual teachers, as in Hillsborough, or in school based plans as in NY, have argued that this will help get the best teachers into struggling schools by rewarding results. In Hillsborough the rewards have gone to those who teach rich kids.

Attempting to answer the criticism of reliance on single test scores the Florida plan had 60 percent of the bonus based on student test scores, while other criteria would also be considered.

Still, teachers in Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando wanted nothing to do with it. The districts rejected merit pay, giving up millions in bonus money. But Hillsborough agreed and received $10.8-million in state funding for their program.

“We knew the odds were going to be about one in three” of a teacher getting the award, said Jean Clements, president of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association. “But that’s way better than the lottery.”

There’s a union leader who I hope was misquoted.

Half of this year’s finalists for Teacher of the Year - supposedly the best of the best - did not qualify for merit pay. And only two of those that did are working in low-income schools.