‘Incentive’ pay for teachers

The reverberations continue over the teachers union plan to ask Nevada voters to jack up taxes on casinos to raise more money for the public schools.

Under the measure, the state gaming tax on the largest casinos would increase 3 percentage points to 9.75 percent. That could raise up to $400 million each year.

The proposed initiative no doubt has triggered ashen faces in many a Strip executive suite. In addition, the Culinary union panned the plan last week, saying it’s a bad idea to place such a burden on their gaming partners.

Even with such high-powered opposition, though, you can bet the proposal will have widespread appeal among voters.

So far, much of the attention on the initiative has focused on the fact that the union would direct a significant portion of the loot to higher teacher pay. But language in the petition does require that some of the money also be used to “improve the achievement of students” and for “incentive pay for employees.”

What those phrases mean, precisely, remains to be seen.

Lynn Warne, president of the Nevada State Education Association, said Friday that if her union’s ballot measure succeeds, the definition of “incentive pay” will be decided as a matter of collective bargaining between county school districts and local unions.

Let’s hope, then, that Clark County School District officials and teachers have been watching what’s been going on in other states — and even in Washington, D.C.

According to a McClatchy-Tribune analysis last week, eight states have implemented some version of merit pay. The cities of Denver and Houston have also created their own programs.

And earlier this year, Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat, proposed requiring performance pay for teachers who show results in underperforming schools as part of the No Child Left Behind Act.

Nevada has long been a comfortable locale for members of the entrenched education establishment. Reforms that have become more and more common elsewhere — merit pay and school choice, for instance — have largely bypassed the state. It would be easy to implement “incentive pay” plans here that do little to change the status quo.

But are we dreaming to hope that any Clark County “incentive pay” plan will acknowledge the value of a pay structure that holds educators accountable for results and rewards teachers whose students improve and succeed? Probably, but we’ll see.