Merit-pay party poopers

PRESIDENT OBAMA is standing up for merit pay for high-performing teachers. But his words aren't resonating with the right audience in Massachusetts, where union leaders are resisting an innovative pay-for-performance program designed to expand the number of students taking Advanced Placement courses, especially in urban schools.

In 2007, the nonprofit Mass Insight Education and Research Institute secured a $13.2 million grant funded primarily by ExxonMobil Corp. to recruit, train, and reward teachers for Advanced Placement classes in math, science, and English. Educators liked the emphasis on teacher training. State and local leaders praised the National Math and Science Initiative's emphasis on enrolling more black and Hispanic students in challenging AP coursework. Ten high schools in mostly urban areas, including Boston, Revere, Chelsea, and Springfield, signed up, buoyed by an earlier pilot program in Texas that showed college graduation rates rising significantly for minority students who scored a passing grade on at least one AP exam.

The program provides sensible rewards to teachers for good performance. Teachers can receive bonuses of up to $3,000 based on their ability to increase participation and the number of students who achieve qualifying scores on the AP exams. In the urban schools, where AP offerings are thin, teachers can receive an additional $100 for each student who scores 3 or higher on the 5-point AP exam.

But now some teachers unions, including those in Milton, Marlborough, and Northampton, are objecting to the teacher pay boost, according to Morton Orlov, who runs the AP initiative. And the Boston Teachers Union has filed a labor grievance to block the AP pay-for-performance plan at the O'Bryant School in Roxbury.

The teacher awards are consistent with growing evidence that students benefit in classrooms where teacher compensation is linked to performance. Yet teachers unions cling to the belief that seniority and degrees are better guides for determining a teacher's worth. Never mind that the AP initiative is a pilot program funded with private money; the unions are still against it.

"We are not recommending participation," says Anne Wass, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association. Wass says the bonuses undermine collegiality and ignore the preparatory work done by teachers on behalf of AP students during earlier grades. Monetary awards, she says, should be given to the entire school.

If participating AP teachers want to donate their awards to their schools, that would be their own business. But the unions should drop their resistance before the National Math and Science Initiative pulls away out of fear that Massachusetts is no longer fertile ground for education reform.