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The Daily Tar Heel

NC yet to make decision on teachers

Striking teachers returned to the classroom in Chicago this week, but the controversy surrounding teacher evaluations in North Carolina is not likely to end anytime soon.

Teachers’ groups in the state oppose merit pay systems that only consider student test scores, but there’s no consensus about how to reward the best educators.

Legislation calling for public school reforms, which would have mandated performance pay, passed the N.C. Senate but was halted in a N.C. House of Representatives committee earlier this year. The issue features prominently in both N.C. gubernatorial candidates’ education platforms.

Current law gives each local board of education the option to develop its own performance pay plans.

But school boards such as the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education continue the traditional policy of paying teachers based on experience, board member James Barrett said.

Merit pay with a stronger emphasis on student test performance, among other contract issues, prompted the Chicago teachers’ strike.

“I don’t have a problem conceptually with differential pay, but there are so many different factors involved that make it very difficult to come up with a system that makes it fair,” Barrett said. “The difficult part of the issue is deciding how you differentiate teaching.”

The law states that teachers who receive merit bonuses should demonstrate student improvement, additional responsibilities or employment in understaffed subjects.

Rodney Ellis, president of the N.C. Association of Educators, emphasized the need for a reward system based on a holistic approach.

“Testing has been ineffective in helping students grow and develop to be contributing members to society,” Ellis said. “I think the criticism (that too many teachers teach to the test) is valid and there is too much testing — period.”

Pat McCrory, the Republican candidate for governor, supports the elimination of seniority-based rewards in favor of merit pay.

“Criteria for a fair, thorough, data-driven teacher evaluation system will have to be developed in conjunction with lawmakers, parents, administrators, students and the teachers themselves,” said Ricky Diaz, spokesman for McCrory, in an email.

Yet Schorr Johnson, spokesman for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Walter Dalton, said N.C. teachers’ salaries should be raised before any reforms.

“Merit pay may be worthwhile, but only after reaching the national average (for teachers’ salaries),” Johnson said in an email.

Contact the desk editor at state@dailytarheel.com.

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