Public-school teachers in North Carolina will see their annual performance bonuses sliced by almost 30 percent under a plan approved by the State Board of Education yesterday.
It's the first time that they won't receive the maximum amount the program allows, a move necessitated by a cap on the state money used to pay for the bonuses and an increase in the number of schools qualifying for the merit pay.
This year, state legislators limited education officials to spending no more than $94.3 million on educators' bonuses, even though education officials had cautioned that they needed millions more to give teachers and assistants the maximum amount.
Board Chairman Howard Lee said that it's unfortunate that teachers won't receive the full amount but he understands that the state was facing a budget crunch. A reduced bonus is better than nothing, he said.
"There are corporations and businesses in our state that are not able to give raises to their employees," Lee said.
Teachers will receive $1,053 if their school's students exceeded testing benchmarks this year instead of the usual $1,500, while those at schools that met expectations will receive $527 instead of $750. Bonuses for teacher assistants will also be scaled back by a comparative rate to $351 at schools that surpassed expectations and $263 for those at schools that met state benchmarks.
Teachers are going to be "extremely disappointed" in the lower bonus rates, said Sheri Strickland, the president of the N.C. Association of Educators.
"I just think that it sends a very wrong message to the people who are out there in the school systems every day, meeting these challenges to (achieve) higher and higher standards, for even this small amount of money," Strickland said about the scaled-back awards.
About 82 percent of North Carolina schools qualified for the bonuses this year, which was calculated by their students' performance on standardized math and reading tests.
That rate normally is calculated by using reading and math test scores from kindergarten through 12th grade.
But this year, the state did not use scores from some new standardized tests, including end-of-year reading and a number of science subject tests. Students' scores on those assessments will be released in November.
Last year, when all reading and math tests were used, 72 percent of schools met or exceeded testing benchmarks.
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