By Charles Oliver
Jill Blackmon is finishing a bachelor’s in education at Dalton State College. She likes what she has heard so far about Gov. Sonny Perdue’s education reform plans.
“I’m on the side of the students. I think it will attract better quality teachers. I know some teachers will be upset. It’s new. It’s innovative, and people are reluctant to embrace change,” said Blackmon, who graduates in May.
Perdue has proposed plans that would base teacher pay more on how well students improve each year and less on the number of higher degrees a teacher has or the number of years he or she has taught.
“I like the idea personally because as a new teacher I would have the opportunity to earn a higher salary at an earlier stage of my career than I would if it depended on seniority or advanced degrees,” Blackmon said. “I know that I have been trained well. I know how to motivate students. I know how to get students to achieve. And because I am confident in my own abilities, I think it would be a win-win for myself and my students.”
But some other future teachers have concerns about the proposals.
Justin Payne, a sophomore education major at DSC, says there are many factors beyond a teacher’s control that affect how a child learns.
“With education, there’s so many different situations that can affect a child’s performance. Not every kid has a computer to go home to or Internet access or a wide range of books outside the classroom,” he said.
Payne said merit pay assumes that everyone starts at the same point so that any difference in outcome is based on their performance. But teachers, and their students, don’t start at the same point, he said.
“From what I’ve heard about it, it would cause a lot of resentment among teachers,” said DSC junior Felicia Banks, president of the school’s chapter of the Student Georgia Association of Educators.
Banks and Payne say they fear the pay plan would cause teachers to try to avoid schools with large numbers of students from poor economic backgrounds or other factors that may make them more difficult to teach.
“As with many things, it’s the details that will make the difference,” said state Rep. Tom Dickson, R-Cohutta.
Dickson, a member of the House Education Committee and former superintendent of Whitfield County Schools, said he hasn’t seen the details yet of Perdue’s plan but is familiar with the basic concepts it embodies.
“There is real merit to the idea, and I think teacher organizations have said for a long time they support pay for performance,” Dickson said.
He said the concern is that merit pay could lead teachers away from schools where it is more difficult to meet certain standards. But he said a merit pay plan could be devised that would address those concerns.
“The (federal) No Child Left Behind law says the standard is the child on grade level. If that’s the standard, I see real problems,” he said. “That doesn’t take into consideration where the child is when he comes into the class.”
“But if the standard is ‘Have we made a year’s worth of progress?’ or ‘Have we made substantial progress?’ then we are getting closer to what I think is a fair way to measure progress,” Dickson said. “We still have to look at all the factors.”
Dickson said he would like to see a pilot plan tried in several school systems for a few years before applying it across the state.
“All children are different and learn at a different rate, but I think the idea does have merit,” said state Sen. Don Thomas, R-Dalton.
Thomas, who previously served as chairman of the Whitfield County Board of Education, said he has not yet seen all the details of the governor’s plan, but he said any merit pay plan has to account for all of the things, besides the quality of teaching, that might affect a student’s performance.
“We certainly have to factor in where a student was when he went into a classroom. All those factors have to be included,” he said.
David Cochran, a parent with children at Southeast High, Eastbrook Middle and Eastside Elementary schools, said he hasn’t had a chance to look at the plan, but he says the idea of merit pay for teachers is a good one.
“Teachers, like anyone else, should be paid on performance, which in turn, you would expect to see better performance from students,” he said.
Cochran said some students may be easier to teach than others and any merit plan would have to take that into account.
