Published Online: June 24, 2011
By Terrence Stutz, The Dallas Morning News (MCT)
Premium article access courtesy of Edweek.org.
Austin, Texas
The largest teacher merit pay program in the nation is no more, reduced to a shell of its former self after having 90 percent of its funding slashed in the Texas budget crunch.
About 180,000 teachers—more than half the state's total—will receive bonus checks this fall for their work in the just concluded school year. But over the next two years, when state funding plummets, there will be enough money for only 18,000 to receive bonuses.
Originally trumpeted by Gov. Rick Perry and legislative leaders as the wave of the future in public education, the program fell victim to the scaled-back budget approved by the Legislature and signed by the governor last week. The state is spending $392 million in the current two-year budget on the District Awards for Teacher Excellence program but will have just $40 million for it in the next one.
It's one of several supplemental education programs that were slashed. While most of the attention has gone to lawmakers' failure to provide $4 billion of new money that districts were anticipating to pay for new students, several efforts designed to boost achievement or experiment with new incentives were eliminated, or greatly reduced.
One grant program launched by former Gov. George W. Bush, the Student Success Initiative, has been slashed 92 percent—from $293 million to $23.5 million.
The program was aimed at helping hundreds of thousands of low-achieving students catch up, with an emphasis on reading and math skills. Among other things, the program requires students in grades 5 and 8 to pass the TAKS test to be promoted.
Another reduction that will hit schools and families hard is the end of state funding for full-day prekindergarten classes. About 300 school districts that have full-day classes will have to decide whether to keep them going with local money. The program cost $209 million in the current budget.
In all, nearly $1.4 billion in state grant money is being slashed over the next two years—on top of the $4 billion in regular state funding that will be cut during the period.
"That was an awful lot of money that was going to schools that won't be there anymore," said Richard Kouri of the Texas State Teachers Association. "It can't help but have an adverse impact on public education."
School Readiness
Susan Hoff, a senior vice president for United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and chair of the Texas Early Childhood Education Coalition, said the cuts will mean some families can't use the program at all because they can't pick their child up in the middle of the day.
"Across the board it will hurt the quality of the program in terms of preparing these children for kindergarten and giving them the school-readiness skills they need to succeed in school," she said.
Hoff said the decision to cut the funding flies in the face of research, including a recent study from Texas A&M University, that points to long-term savings from making an investment in early childhood education. Those children are less likely to need remediation or be held back in later grades.
The program generally serves economically disadvantaged children as well as those who are homeless, in foster homes, have limited English skills or have parents in the military.
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Legislative leaders said they had no choice given that the state was $23 billion short of what was needed to keep current services and account for growth and inflation, without raising taxes. They also said they hope to restore funding to some of the programs when the economy improves and the state revenue picture brightens.
Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, noted that most education grant programs were eliminated in the original House budget proposal earlier this year. Senators were able to put back about $400 million to keep several of the programs alive, though at much lower funding levels.
Shapiro, who touted the advantages of merit pay plan for teachers when the plan was approved by lawmakers in 2006, said she is not giving up on the program and hopes the state can get federal matching dollars.
"It is not dead. It will survive," she said.
House Public Education Committee Chairman Rob Eissler, R-The Woodlands, said all the programs "were good ideas when we had more money, but that also made them the most expendable when we had to start cutting."
Eissler said he remains supportive of the merit pay plan and the other key programs and expects to see them get more funding in the future. But he also emphasized that Texas public schools are entering into an era where they will have to be more results-oriented and less funding-oriented.
"I don't foresee a big flood of money coming in the next biennium. So the conversation will be more focused on how we can educate kids better," he said. "In the future, it's not going to be how much you spend, but how well you spend it."
Eissler acknowledged that the hundreds of school superintendents who decided not to participate in the teacher merit pay plan because they were worried it might be discontinued in a budget crunch turned out to be right.
"We told them the program was too important and would be protected. But it turned out it was one of the first things to get cut," he said.
Hope for Merit Pay
Catherine Frazier, a spokeswoman for Perry, said the Republican governor still considers the merit pay program important.
"The budget situation was a challenge and necessary cuts had to be made, but he still looks forward to continuing the program in the future," she said.
The state's teacher groups vigorously opposed the merit pay law when it was enacted, mainly because it tied the bonuses to student test scores and allowed lawmakers to sidestep the issue of salary improvements for all teachers.
"It didn't turn out to be the model program for the nation that its proponents hoped for—and now it's being reduced to a fraction of what it was. It might be a good model for how not to do a merit pay program," Kouri said. "We're going to see a lot of teachers getting bonuses for last year who will be shut out in the future."
About 295 school districts, including Dallas and 13 other North Texas districts, participated in the program.
A study released by the Texas Education Agency last December found that the merit pay plan slightly increased student test scores at participating schools and also caused more teachers to remain at those campuses than in the past. However, the study cautioned that achievement gains were small and could have resulted in part from other reform initiatives.
Bonuses were based primarily on test scores of students, although each district developed its own criteria for distributing the merit pay money using state guidelines. In some cases, the bonuses were distributed to deserving teachers across the district, while in other cases the money was directed at a select group of schools.
Average bonuses were much larger in select schools' plans. For districtwide plans that spread the bonuses out, the average payment was $1,361. Where the bonuses went only to a group of schools in a district, the average payment was $3,344. Generally, larger bonuses produced better test scores and teacher retention.
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