"OK, kids, pass the test and I get a raise."

Well, it's happening. The fear of nearly every union-loving teacher is coming to pass. The success of teachers is being measured by the success of their students -- in one Texas school district at least. A news story from Houston appears below, with my comments afterward.

Houston teachers' pay now tied to scores
The Associated Press
HOUSTON — Houston became the largest school district in the country on Thursday, Jan. 12, to adopt a merit pay plan for teachers that focuses on students' tests scores.

By a 9-0 vote, the Houston school board approved a plan that offers teachers as much as $3,000 in extra pay if their students improve on state and national tests. The program could be expanded to provide as much as $10,000 in merit pay for teachers.

The vote came after several teachers told the board at its monthly meeting they believed the plan was flawed and unfair because some teachers will be eligible for larger bonuses than others.

"This is not a perfect plan, but it is a beginning," said school board president Diana Davila.

Other school districts nationwide have implemented various types of incentive pay programs for teachers in recent years. Denver adopted one in November, becoming at the time the largest district to do so. Houston, with more than 200,000 students, is the nation's seventh-largest district.

The plan is divided into three sections, with as much as $1,000 in bonus pay tied to each.

The first will award bonuses to all teachers in schools rated acceptable or higher, based on scores on the state's main standardized test. The second ties pay to student improvement on a standardized test that compares performance to nationwide norms.

In the third section, reading and math teachers whose students fare well compared with others in the district would be eligible for bonuses.

The teachers' union doesn't approve of the plan, saying it focuses too much on test scores and is too complicated.

"Any time you divide one set of teachers from another, you are sending the wrong message," said Jana Angelov, a high school art teacher who has been with the district for eight years.

Ben Hernandez, 30, a kindergarten teacher who helped design the plan, said that even though he does not like the focus on test scores, he believes the plan will be a good way to reward teachers for hard work.

"If I am to continue to be successful as an educator, I must change," he said. "The system must change also. This proposal is a change from the past, a change for the better."

The district will continue working to increase teachers' base pay, Superintendent Abe Saavedra said. And he is open to modifying the plan if needed.

"It's time not only for this district but for every district in this country to start looking (to see) if there is a different way to compensate our professionals," he said.

In general, teachers across the country have been paid based on their years of experience and education levels. Starting teachers in Houston make about $36,000 a year. The average salary in the district is about $45,000.

This plan, as with any argument for merit pay, is flawed for several fundamental reasons:

First, merit pay always pits teacher against teacher, eroding the environment of collaboration that often leads to innovation and improvement in the first place. In the school where I teach, teachers often share materials and ideas, work together and learn from each other. With merit pay incentives based on the results of students on certain tests, teachers would be less likely to help their colleagues -- people they would see as competition. As I read the Houston plan above, the third section of raises would pit teachers against their colleagues across the district by using norms instead of standards. That means someone is above the norm and someone is below it -- a lot of kids will be average, and that would mean a lot of teachers would go without the bonuses.

Second, the incentives for achievement are based on tests which, especially in the Houston plan, will not allow for widespread success; there will be few winners. As explained above, using certain tests, only the top-performing students would earn a bonus for their teacher. There is more in the curriculum, indeed more to learning, than can be measured on a standardized or norm-referenced test.

Third, merit pay incentives force teachers to make tough choices about curriculum -- either they will focus on one test which will provide the best pay bonus, they will spend all their time helping lower-achieving students at the expense of other students, or they will refuse to teach the classes of needier students who stand a lower chance of success on these tests. While some people may say that "teaching to the test" is exactly what is needed, in most cases doing so is not educationally sound. Certainly, all teaching should be geared toward academic achievement, and much of a class' curriculum is measured on a test, but some of the tests do not measure all of the learning by every student. Furthermore, some students may not be able to demonstrate their learning effectively on some tests. Perhaps they are students who are just learning English or need special assistance; these students do not perform well on such tests.

Once again, bad educational reform has begun in Houston, Texas. Former Education Secretary Rod Paige had been superintendent of Houston Schools while George W. Bush was governor of the state. The duo took Houston's model national in what became the "No Child Left Behind" Act. I'll be watching Houston to see what happens there. Every teacher wants the best for his or her students, but what is the true cost of merit pay?

-- Wenatchee, Wash.