When the city’s Department of Education hired more than 100 people to serve as local instructional supervisors – a position created under the Bloomberg administration’s newly organized school system – the job description included a $135,000 salary with the potential of a $15,000 bonus.

In the first year, the city paid out about $370,000 in bonuses to 97 local instructional supervisors across the five boroughs. While the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, touted the initiative as a model for creating a system of performance-based pay, the Department of Education quietly did away with the payments after the 2003-04 school year.

“We wanted to motivate and support citywide progress,” Mr. Klein’s chief of staff, Kristen Kane, said. But the department has put a hold on the additional payments while it shifts focus to a new “accountability” initiative. Ms. Kane said the chancellor wanted to align the bonus pay with the department’s new efforts.

Mr. Klein announced last month that as part of his increased focus on accountability in the classroom, he hired a Columbia University Law School professor, James Liebman, as the new chief accountability officer. Starting in September, the department will keep close tabs on the progress of students as they advance from grade to grade. For example, instead of evaluating how this year’s fourth-grade class fared compared to last year’s, the department will monitor how the fourth-grade class fared compared to how it did the year before, in third grade.

Ms. Kane said that under the new accountability system, merit pay could also be added to other jobs, but she said that she couldn’t say with certainty if the bonus pay would definitely be brought back in the next school year.

Under the old system, the $15,000 was paid out as follows: a $5,000 bonus at the discretion of the regional superintendent, $5,000 if the network of schools within the region achieved its targets, $3,000 if the region achieved its targets, and an additional $2,000 if the city achieved its overall improvement goals.

The targets were defined by moving students up a level on the city and state English and math assessments for students in grades three through eight. For high school students, achievement was measured by the passing rates on Regents exams in English and math.

In Region 9 in Manhattan, 14 local instruction supervisors received bonuses totaling about $50,000 in 2003-2004. In District 75, the special education district, five local instruction supervisors received bonuses totaling $19,000.

Mr. Klein’s staff has called the bonus pay the first of its kind. The union representing city principals, the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, negotiated a $15,000 performance-based bonus as part of its last contract that went into effect in 1999.

The Department of Education recently extended the deadline for public school administrators, who must complete a three-page essay in order to qualify for the pay. According to the New York Post, about 470 almost lost out on a total of $1.5 million in bonus pay because they had failed to complete the paperwork in time.