Should a teacher's pay be based on the performance of his or her students? The State Board of Education is grappling with that issue as it works out an application for funding under a new federal competition.
To be eligible for the part of the $5 billion available in the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top competition, applicants must show that performance assessments for teachers and school administrators are directly linked to student achievement.
The state board is putting together a proposal for the competition that calls for dramatic improvements in 20 school districts.
One of the proposals would be to make pay for teachers merit-based.
That issue proved to be the most controversial at a meeting of the State Board of Education Wednesday, the Hartford Courant reports. Board Vice Chairwoman Janet Finneran said she could not support the merit pay proposal.
"How can you decide whether a high school math teacher gets more pay than a kindergarten teacher? Teaching kindergarten is a more difficult job," Finneran told the paper.
The plan would target 20 districts: Hartford, East Hartford, Manchester, Bloomfield, New Britain, Bristol, Middletown, Meriden, Ansonia, Bridgeport, Danbury, Hamden, Naugatuck, New Haven, New London, Norwalk, Stamford, Waterbury, West Haven and Windham, as well as the state-run Connecticut Technical High School System.
If the state is to apply for the Race to the Top money, Connecticut law would have to be amended to allow for the performance assessment of teachers to be linked to student achievement by the Dec. 30 application deadline.
