House approves teacher merit pay
BOISE - Lawmakers in the Idaho House approved legislation Wednesday to introduce a pay-for-performance plan for teachers, sending the bill to the governor's desk.
The legislation would award bonuses to teachers who raise student achievement and take on hard-to-fill positions or leadership roles. It passed on a 44-26 vote, with more than a dozen Republicans joining Democrats in opposition to the measure amid concerns over how Idaho will pay for the plan.
The legislation is one of three Republican-backed bills that were crafted in the 2011 session to carry out an education reform package authored by public schools chief Tom Luna, who praised passage of the bill to introduce merit pay in Idaho.
"This legislation is all about recognizing and rewarding our great teachers," Luna said.
Another piece of Luna's plan was sent to the governor's desk on Tuesday. It would phase out "tenure" or continuing contracts for new teachers and restrict collective bargaining.
This leaves the third and biggest piece of Luna's reform package behind in the Idaho Senate, where it is being reworked because of lawmaker concerns. It would boost technology in the classroom, require online courses and increase class sizes to pay for the reforms, including the pay-for-performance piece.
The merit pay plan was crafted last year as part of Idaho's application for the federal grant competition. Idaho and dozens of other states were turned down during the "Race to the Top" contest, which offered $4.35 billion in federal grant prizes to improve struggling schools.
Luna dusted off the biggest piece of Idaho's failed bid - a plan to pay teachers on merit - and made it a cornerstone of his new plan to overhaul the state's public education system. He unveiled the reform package in January with support from Butch Otter and it has so far dominated the 2011 session.
While the Idaho Education Association helped write the pay-for-performance plan for the state's Race to the Top application, the teachers' union has been among the staunchest critics of Luna's proposal to restructure how Idaho's scarce education dollars are spent.
The group organized rallies statewide to protest passage of the bills that would limit the teachers union and introduce merit pay, calling the pay-for-performance plan "unfunded."
The merit pay plan carries a $38 million price tag in the 2013 fiscal year, and $51.3 million in the 2014 fiscal year.
During debate in the Idaho House, opponents called the bill an unfunded mandate because the legislation to pay for it remains stalled in the Senate.
Idaho Falls Rep. Janice McGeachin was among 13 Republican lawmakers who joined Democrats in voting against the measure. McGeachin said she supports the concept of pay-for-performance, but feared placing the merit pay plan into Idaho statute would result in more pressure on the public schools budget.
"My primary concern is the finances of the plan and that it just doesn't work," said McGeachin said.
Supporters of the measure rejected that argument, saying the pay-for-performance plan didn't necessarily require a new funding stream.
While the bill will create a statutory requirement in the public schools budget, the money for education could be rearranged to fund the merit pay plan, said state Rep. Bob Nonini, a Coeur d'Alene Republican who chairs the House Education Committee.
"It is not an unfunded mandate," Nonini said. "It's not taking any new money, it's taking the current money that we appropriate to public schools and using it differently."