Merit Pay

The chart at right shows something that's startling and new in the New York public school world — pay based on performance. To those of us in the private sector, performance-based compensation hardly seems like a stunning innovation. It's pretty common, as everyone from Wall Street bankers reaping end-of-the year bonuses to Park Avenue doormen getting Christmastime tips can attest. But government workers, and particularly those in the world of government schools, have for too long been insulated from the compensation system that provides incentives for excellence in the rest of the world. As our Kathleen Lucadamo reported in yesterday's New York Sun, the performance bonuses to superintendents are part of a one-year experimental program funded by a business group, the New York City Partnership. A separate, publicly funded program exists to provide performance-based bonuses to principals.

The existence of these programs is a tribute to the fresh thinking that Mayor Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, are bringing to public education in New York. Here's hoping that in the coming year, they expand the bonus program to include teachers — to be compensated based on their individual performance. The teachers union has expressed openness to merit pay, but it insists that any such program be based on schoolwide performance, not that of an individual teacher. That's a dodge. Clearly the union recognizes the principle of merit pay in the way in which it compensates its own highly capable president, Rhonda "Randi" Weingarten, who recent federal records show is paid $192,862 a year by the New York City teachers union, along with an additional $15,000 a year from the New York State United Teachers. Our view is that if the teachers do as good a job for the students as Ms. Weingarten does for her members, they, like the superintendents and principals, deserve a piece of the upside. We recognize that teachers and other educators aren't in it just for the money. There are other rewards to helping children learn. But it's hard to see how providing some incentives could hurt. And, just as crucially, a public record of individual teacher performance could help lend meaning to a reform as important in its way as merit pay — giving parents the opportunity to choose what school their child will attend and thus what teachers their children will learn from.