Holding its annual convention in Chicago this summer, the National Education Association (NEA), the nations' largest union of teachers, considered adopting a policy of endorsing contracts based on teacher and student performance when members are negotiating teacher salaries with school districts. On July 6, in a close decision, the NEA voted against approving such contracts, thus ensuring future debate on the subject.

Traditionally, the salaries and advancement schedules of public school educators are linked to an individual teachers' classroom experience, level of education and the occasional cost-of-living increase. As student scores on standardized tests have fallen over the last decade, public and political clamor has grown to make teachers more accountable for poor student performance. Several state and local school boards around the country have implemented programs to analyze teacher performance by measuring student achievement, or lack there of. Numerous government officials propose using these findings to financially reward or punish teachers in direct correlation to job and student performance.

With job satisfaction plummeting among educators, and their salaries lagging behind the average salaries of equally educated workers, factions within the education sector are entertaining the possibility of differential salaries based on student performance or teacher merit.

On One Hand...

The process of simply advancing a step on the seniority-based salary schedule for every year of employment offers no sense of motivation for educators and drives many from the field. Offering bonuses for improved personal or student performance provides teachers a financial incentive to further develop and push their abilities as educators, which in turn helps their students excel scholastically.

By rewarding teachers for their job performance rather than seniority, differential salaries improve teacher wages by introducing competition to the profession. Performance and merit-based salaries are the fairest ways to attract and compensate good teachers, while improving the current state of public education.

On the Other Hand...

Abandoning the traditional salary schedule for teachers in favor of differential pay systems would be unfair and demoralizing to millions of dedicated educators, as well as misallocate badly needed resources.

Despite how highly motivated and passionate they are about their profession, teachers cannot always reverse negative performance trends, especially for students with learning problems or who come from abusive or dysfunctional environments. Instead of devising complicated studies to analyze teacher and student performance that waste untold millions of dollars and create more bureaucracy in the public education system, elected officials should concentrate on improving salaries throughout the profession to retain quality teachers who push their students to perform.

• Performance-based salaries involve bonuses for teachers whose students have shown significant improvement ranging from their class attendance to scores on standardized tests.

• Merit-based salaries involve bonuses for individual teachers who are recognized by their superiors for high job performance.

• The average annual salary of teachers nationally hovers around $40,00, with entry-level teachers making around $26,000 a year.

• New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, Michigan and Pennsylvania paid their teachers the highest average salaries nationally during the 1998 — 1999 school year ($49,764).

• Montana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, North Dakota and South Dakota paid their teachers the lowest average salaries nationally during the 1998 — 1999 school year ($29,916).

Education Week, Chicago Tribune, NEA, AFT,CNN