SOMETIMES good concepts turn into bad policies. The salary bonuses the Los Angeles Unified School District awards to its teachers may be a textbook example.
In principle, it is laudable to reward teachers for furthering their education, on the assumption their new knowledge will be handed down to their students. But in practice, critics are right to wonder if the public gets its money's worth when the LAUSD splashes out $519 million a year to teachers for "graduate coursework" that may include easy-A online classes and nights at the opera.
We would like to see the next contract between the district and the teachers union permit at least some of that money to go instead to educators who put in extra effort to directly improve school campuses and the lives of children.
A report released last week by the reform-minded National Council on Teacher Quality said the LAUSD spends one-quarter of its teacher payroll on salary bonuses tied to ongoing education.
Daily News reporter Connie Llanos calculated that an average midcareer teacher who would get a $52,000 salary based on seniority alone can earn an extra $20,000 - a 38 percent bonus - by getting all the extra credit possible.
An eye-catching statistic: Fully 60 percent of teachers have earned the maximum course credits available,
the equivalent of receiving three master's degrees.Now, this system generally is less troubling than the Los Angeles city employees bonus and overtime system that was often used as a sneaky way to pad employee salaries.
Still, it raises questions: Does the added expense translate into better learning by LAUSD students? Does the time that teachers put into their own further education take away from lesson plans and working with kids? Can the LAUSD afford this in an era of shrinking budgets?
The program seems rife with the sorts of oddities that tick off today's hypervigilant taxpayer: Sometimes teachers prove they've done extra coursework by producing graduate-level research papers - but sometimes they do it by submitting drawings of what they've seen at a museum. Teachers can keep earning points by taking the same course more than once (as long as it's not more than once in five years). As the LAUSD itself found out last year, 30 teachers sought credit for the equivalent of a two-year master's program after completing a one-semester online course.
Good teachers ought to be rewarded, but this is ridiculous. What makes it all the more frustrating is that teachers unions fight vociferously when anyone raises the idea of giving teachers bonuses for what they do well, also known as merit pay, rather than just expanding their own academic horizons.
In any case, the way that teachers are paid is archaic. They invest so much time and money to years of academics, and then start out with blue-collar wages and are expected to subsidize classroom supplies.
Good teachers and good teaching ought to be rewarded. It's great that teachers' hard work pay off for them. But it should pay off for students as well.
New LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy said he would like the bonus system changed to shift the rewards toward teachers who do extra work on campus to help students and colleagues. We agree with that approach.
A Los Angeles Daily News editorial. To read more editorials from the Daily News, go to www.dailynews.com/opinions.
Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_18273306?source=rss
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