Merit Pay For Ohio Teachers Moving Closer To Reality

The state is one step closer towards repealing the law that mandates a minimum salary schedule for teachers -- opening the door to a merit-based pay system. State law spells out the minimum a teacher should get paid and then creates a salary schedule throughout that teacher’s career. A bill passed by the House Education committee gets rid of that specific schedule, and instead requires local school districts to come up with their own systems. Republican Rep. Gerald Stebelton of Lancaster is the chair. “Any salary schedule that a local district has—if they want to keep it they can keep it. If they wanna negotiate with their unions for a salary schedule they can do that. We’re not changing any contracts as they were written today," says Stebelton. Stebelton says it’s time to revamp Ohio’s schools and allow for systems that reward good teachers. “We need to face the reality that there are teachers that are less qualified than other teachers. They’re not as well-trained—they’re not as good in teaching—and having the same salary schedule for a second grade teacher who is not a good teacher and the one who is an excellent teacher is not fair to the one who is an excellent teacher," says Stebelton. “Ohio needs to focus on ways to pay committed educators more not make it easier to pay them less," says DiMauro. That’s Scott DiMauro with the Ohio Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union. He says teachers must be able to depend on each other and work together, a relationship that --he says—doesn’t grow if teachers are pitted against each other for raises. “When you introduce merit-based systems into the equation what you’re doing is—you’re creating incentives for competition rather than cooperation between teachers and that doesn’t really seem to help students," says DiMauro. But supporters of the bill, including Republican Rep. Andrew Brenner of Powell, believe that getting rid of the current pay standards will mean good things for teachers. “I think that it’s an artificial price control. I think actually it is keeping wages and salaries stagnant without allowing the flexibility to pay good teachers more money and work to try and eliminate bad teachers," says Brenner. Opponents of the bill sparred with Republican backers during the committee hearing. Rep. John Becker of Cincinnati says he spent about 30 years in the private sector. After Phil Hayes of the Columbus Education Association delivered testimony against the provision, Becker asked this question. “What makes teachers unique as professionals that they can’t have or live on merit pay the way the rest of us do?," asks Becker. Hayes says there are many variables in play while judging a teacher’s performance. He used the example of a student who was dumped right before taking a test. “I expected ‘accelerated’ or ‘advanced’ and she got a 399 because her boyfriend came up to her five minutes before my class started—before that test started and broke up with her. So do you think I should be graded for that? That I should be paid for that?," says Hayes. Hayes also expressed frustration at the timing of the provision. The change was thrown into an existing House bill last week after it already received six hearings. However it still passed out of committee along party lines. The bill is expected to go before the entire House for a floor vote this week.