Ohio may become the first state to implement statewide merit pay for teachers →
Ohio’s new collective bargaining law would wipe out automatic public school teacher pay raises in favor of a statewide pay-for-performance system that would be the first of its kind in the country.
No state now has a mandatory statewide merit pay system for teachers. And while districts or schools across the country have experimented with plans tying bonus money to student achievement, teachers are still guaranteed their annual pay raises as called for by their contracts.
That won’t be the case in Ohio under the new law, commonly known as Senate Bill 5, which eliminates salary schedules and step increases for Ohio’s 110,000 full-time public school teachers in favor of a straight pay-for-performance system paid for at the local levels.
“That’s the most fascinating component of this,” said Kathy Christie, chief of staff for the Education Commission of the States, a Denver-based nonpartisan group that studies education issues and policies across the country.
While it is done with success at a single school district in Colorado, Christie said Ohio would be the only state in the country where merit pay would replace automatic raises statewide.
In other news, Merit Pay isn’t being implemented for state employees in the Governor’s Office.
