Mayor Announces Plan for Teacher Merit Pay

Big news on the merit pay front: Bloomberg and Klein make deal with UFT President Randi Weingarten on offering incentives to schools for increased performance (which would then be dispersed to the teachers).

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced this afternoon what he called the biggest program of merit pay for teachers in the nation. Under the program, 200 schools — about 15 percent of all schools in the system — will be eligible this academic year for $20 million in privately financed bonuses if student performance improves by a certain amount. In the 2008-9 school year, 400 schools will be available for the bonuses.

The annual bonus would be equivalent to $3,000 per educator, but a committee at each school would have the power to decide how to distribute the money. So under the system, a teacher whose students showed particular improvements on standardized tests would not necessarily receive a greater individual bonus than another teacher at the same school whose students had not shown as much improvement.