Merit pay program

Regarding “Merit pay program for Texas teachers pushes salaries past $100,000. But is it fair?,” (May 5): As important as a teacher’s skills must be to provide the best educational results possible, it’s time — long overdue — to pay them an honest salary, not only to keep them in the classroom, but also to attract the very best instructors for future generations.

Surely, any doctoral degree graduate eager to teach is as valuable as any executive manager. There could never be a better reason to use U.S. tax revenue funds to get it done. You don’t need a college education to only earn an annual income of $33,660, the minimum teacher salary in Texas.

Ray Ross, Cypress

While identifying the really excellent teachers is relatively easy (just observe who parents clamor to have as their children’s teacher), identifying the next level of good teachers to be financially rewarded is much more difficult. It is there that the merit pay selection system can pit teacher against teacher and undermine morale and teamwork.

The state’s recently adopted Teacher Incentive Allotment Program must be carefully and sensitively applied to avoid this pitfall. A significant omission in TIAP is that it does not address basic compensation of the vast majority of teachers that is necessary to keep them in the profession nor does it offer reasons for college graduates to enter the teaching profession. A more comprehensive team based incentive pay plan is needed, and that plan is available in Houston’s experiences.

The Houston ISD implemented such a plan, called the Second Mile Plan, in the early 1980s that financially rewarded all teachers and staff at individual schools based upon statistically identifiable improvement in the school’s student performance from one year to the next. The nationally recognized Iowa Test of Basic Skills was used to measure achievement.

This Second Mile Plan motivated teachers to work as a team to improve student achievement — there was no competition between teachers or among schools.

This plan was successfully raising test score and reading levels until it was supplanted by the ill-fated and short-lived career ladder passed by the Legislature in 1984 which was an individualized merit pay plan that pitted teacher against teacher.

The career ladder was divisive and spawned many grievances and lawsuits.

By adopting the concepts of the Second Mile Plan, the state has the opportunity to return to a position of national educational leadership.

Kelly Frels, Houston