Bonuses hurt teamwork, are based on flawed data

THE ANSWER to (the Journal’s March 9) editorial question “Why would unions kill great teachers’ bonuses?” was right there in the fourth and fifth paragraphs: the program “undermines collaboration among school teams” and “the evaluation system is too flawed.”

As a retired dental educator and current substitute teacher, I can understand a teachers’ union’s reluctance to accept the process of awarding merit bonuses to individual teachers rather than to all educators involved in a collaborative process and when the evaluation system for awarding these bonuses is, indeed, irreparably-flawed . ....

Your editorial assumes teachers nominated for these awards would be “great” (and) “deserving” teachers “who have proven themselves” and should therefore be “rewarded for their accomplishments” when they may be one of the many educators who successfully collaborated in a program in which all involved should be rewarded — or no one should.

Further, your editorial gave no details concerning the evaluation process for these “deserving teachers.” Considering the union’s ... condemnation of a “flawed” evaluation system, you would be on firmer ground to criticize the union if you considered the merits of the evaluation process before condemning the union’s stand against these teachers’ bonuses. STEPHEN M. FELDMAN Albuquerque