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Hillsborough's Merit-Pay Plan Flunks Test On Intended Results

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 8, 2007

Merit pay can be a powerful motivator for a job well done, but the new merit-pay program for Hillsborough schools has been a fiasco.

The school district last week handed out $10.6 million in bonuses to teachers and administrators who had no idea why some got the reward and others didn't.

Indeed, the inelegant administration of the bonus plan has dampened the intended positive feedback.

If people in an organization don't understand the rules for earning a bonus, how fair is that?

And if they're not told how they fell short, how can they improve their chances for next year?

The district should return to the blackboard and create clear criteria for merit pay, then over-communicate the standards for improving performance.

As it stands, it's anyone's guess why 4,450 teachers and 190 administrators received the $2,100 bonuses from the state-financed MAP program, which relies on a complex formula of student test scores and job evaluations to reward educators.

The teachers and administrators didn't apply for the bonus. They only discovered it when the money showed up in their bank accounts.

While nobody objects to finding a little extra cash in the bank, this is hardly the optimal way to inform people that their exceptional work is being rewarded. And a more orderly system would have diminished the resentment that grew among some employees, who kept checking their accounts for a bounce that never arrived.

Other reward programs for Hillsborough teachers set clear expectations or require teachers to apply. In those cases, everyone who meets the goal gets the money, creating no payday cliffhangers.

In retooling the merit-pay program, Superintendent MaryEllen Elia also should dig into questions about fairness. It seems the formula could treat teachers in different fields differently, even though they are considered to have equal abilities and performance.

It isn't clear if this scenario actually occurred, though, because the district has yet to release a list of how it ranked its employees. Still, the possibility is enough to have some teachers talking lawsuit.

When a student fails to make a grade, no good teacher refuses to tell them how they failed to measure up.

The same standard should be set when evaluating educators.

Guessing games may be fine in elementary school, but when it comes to teacher pay programs, transparency and fairness should be the rule.

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