Some teachers could get extra cash under bill backed by Gov. Pence

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By Paige Clarktimthumb.php-6
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – A bill intended to attract teachers to underperforming public and charter schools passed a Senate committee Wednesday.

Senate Bill 264 – authored by Sen. Jim Banks, R-Columbia City – creates a program to provide a $10,000 annual stipend to teachers for the first two years the teacher is employed at a school meeting certain criteria. However, the Senate Education Committee stripped the funding from the bill.

“Teachers should get paid more,” said Claire Fiddian-Green, special assistant to the governor for education innovation. “They do some of the hardest work.”

The schools must have received a D or F grade two consecutive years or have a population with 50 percent of students at or below the federal free or reduced lunch guidelines.

“I’m trying to make sure that the devil is not in the details,” said Sen. Earline Rogers, D-Gary. “I wish there was something other than money.”

To qualify for the stipend, teachers must qualify as “effective” or “highly effective” on their teacher evaluations.

“Why aren’t the teachers already there being rewarded,” said Sally Sloan, a lobbyist for the Indiana Federation of Teachers. “If we just funded schools adequately this probably wouldn’t be a problem.”

John Barnes, director of legislative affairs for the Department of Education, said this bill focuses more on retraction instead of retention.

“We think right now that retention is the bigger issue,” Barnes said.

Fiddian-Green said Gov. Mike Pence supports the bill and is committed to finding innovative ways to support Indiana’s teachers.

But, John O’Neil, a lobbyist for the Indiana State Teacher’s Association, said the legislation is “unfair to other priorities in a non-budget year.”

An amendment passed that would remove funding of the bill until a later, to-be-determined date.

Paige Clark is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

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3 COMMENTS

  1. This is yet another ridiculous effort which could have terrible, unintended consequences. Creating an incentive for superior teachers to put their energies into anything but a meritorious arrangement is foolish. All we will do is bring the bottom Enders up to mediocrity and diminish the top Enders down to mediocrity.

    The State of Indiana should look into what Britain does with its Grammar Schools. The kids who test among the smartest at age 11, no matter what social class or background they’re from, will go to the top Grammar Schools, while those who did not test as well attend comprehensive schools. It is a blind meritocracy. It allows disadvantaged kids who worked hard a chance to get out of the cycle of poverty, and it ensures no kid is enslaved by circumstance.

  2. “Why aren’t the teachers already there being rewarded,” said Sally Sloan, a lobbyist for the Indiana Federation of Teachers. “If we just funded schools adequately this probably wouldn’t be a problem.”

    * * * * * * * * * * *

    Equality of outcome raises its ugly head again.

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    • Shouldn’t we WANT everyone to succeed, press? Seems to me that Ms. Sloan is right on the money and you, as usual, are wrong.

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