By José Armando Martínez, Ed.D.

SAN JUAN, Dec. 12, 2007 -- At first glance, it was promising news. The Acevedo Vilá administration announced on Dec. 6, 2007 that the Education Department had received $38 million in Schoolwide federal funds to reward as performance bonuses to island teachers, principals, counselors, office personnel and cafeteria staff. This is part of a $151 million package for innovative education programs.

However, upon closer inspection, the bonuses reward educators for not failing, rather than compensating them for improving student performance or education quality.

These bonuses will be paid to schools that simply avoided making the “Needs Improvement” list. These are schools that, as required by federal law, have shown adequate yearly progress on Puerto Rico’s standardized tests, the Pruebas Puertorriqueñas de Aprovechamiento Académico. Schools that do not show adequate yearly progress for two consecutive years fall on the Needs Improvement list. More than half of Puerto Rico’s public schools are on the list.

Avoiding the list doesn’t define excellence, however. The Pruebas measure basic proficiency in math, English and Spanish, not excellence, level of achievement or quality. Put another way, if the Pruebas were measured according to a standard grading system, a school would merely need its students to produce a D- average to avoid the Needs Improvement list. And for this we are handing out bonuses.

Granted, some of the schools receiving bonuses are excellent performers. Puerto Rico has high-achieving public schools, and they should be rewarded. So too, there is value in rewarding schools that have improved their performance and pulled themselves off the list. Some of them have overcome enormous challenges such as social problems in the community, poor infrastructure and lack of materials, to do so.

But what about schools that are mediocre, but just good enough to stay off the Needs Improvement list? Rewarding them is counterproductive. Some states, such as Pennsylvania and Tennessee, employ a Value Added Assessment System to measure teacher performance and gain a clearer sense of the quality of classroom experience for their students. Pennsylvania officials say their system allows educators to go beyond standard metrics and measure areas such as progress of subgroups of students, or to identify groups of students that are achieving at a faster or slower than the expected rate in a given school year.

Outstanding teachers have received salary raises of up to $7,500 per year under value added assessment systems.

At Sapientis we believe teachers must be better compensated. We believe in greater accountability for schools, where high-standard teaching and learning that emphasizes critical thinking is rewarded. We believe passionate, skilled teachers who produce high-achieving students are our most valuable resource. Performance bonuses are good education policy, a way of acknowledging an outstanding educator’s impact on society and helping push public education into one of our top priorities in Puerto Rico. But the bonuses announced on Dec. 6 could lead to bad policy that merely rewards mediocrity.

 Dr. José Armando Martínez is Executive Director of Sapientis.