Teachers who work in Indiana's poor K-12 school districts often face a multitude of challenges. The students aren't as well prepared to learn. Support staff is limited. Technology lags. And sometimes parents don't have the discretionary time to be involved.
All of this means the odds of their students performing well, compared to their peers, in standardized tests are generally stacked against teachers in poor districts.
So these teachers need all the support they can get, and they need to be recognized and rewarded for dealing with the frustrations that often go along with teaching in a resource-strapped district. After all, these teachers generally earn lower salaries than those in richer districts.
But data released this month by the Indiana Department of Education show that teachers who work in more affluent districts generally will receive larger performance-based bonuses this school year than teachers working in poorer schools.
The performance bonuses are based primarily on how well students do on ISTEP+ and end of course assessments, as well as graduation rates. Teachers rated effective or highly effective are eligible to receive the bonuses.
Carmel Clay Schools — located in one of the state's richest districts — topped teacher performance bonus pay, with $2,422 on average per teacher. Zionsville Schools, another rich district, was second with $2,240 per teacher.
At the other end of the spectrum, teachers in the Kokomo School Corp., a relatively poor urban district, will get just $40 per teacher in performance-based bonuses. Many of the teachers in Wayne Township Schools, which will receive a paltry $42 per teacher, said they felt insulted by the bonuses and pledged to give the money to charity.
Indeed, Indiana's system for doling out the performance-based bonuses does the opposite of what it should, which is to encourage teachers to take jobs in poorer school systems — often located in urban areas.
State legislators should change the system for dividing the performance money, which is $40 million this year. A significant portion of it should be used to reward teachers for taking positions in poorer communities, and then a sliding scale should be created that takes into the account the difficulty of improving educational achievement in less affluent districts.
The students in Indiana's rich districts already have all sorts of advantages; the law should assure that kids in poorer districts get their fare share of the best teachers — and that those teachers get their fair share of the performance bonus money.