Teachers excel, but bonus cut

RALEIGH -- North Carolina public schools did so well this year on state tests that bonuses rewarding teachers for their students' work will be slashed by 30 percent.

Teachers at 82 percent of the schools across the state are eligible for bonuses this year because their schools met or exceeded expectations in the state's ABCs of Public Education testing and accountability program, based on data released Thursday.

But the number of eligible teachers so exceeds the thinner pot of money provided by the General Assembly that the State Board of Education reduced individual payouts this year by as much as $447.

"They promised us one thing and took it away," said Susan Sinclair, a kindergarten teacher at Hope Valley Elementary School in Durham. "I guess with the economy the way it is, they had to make cuts somewhere. But why'd they have to take away from the teachers?"

Sinclair, who will enter her 31st year of teaching this month, will get a bonus of $527 instead of the $750 she normally would have received. She said she'll probably spend that bonus, which will be eaten away by taxes, on school supplies for her students for the new year.

Under the ABCs program, all teachers at a school can receive bonuses if test results meet expectations for improvement.

Although state law sets a $1,500 ceiling on each bonus and doesn't specify a minimum, the state Board of Education had never given less than the maximum amount before this year.

State officials said they would need $134.2 million to fully fund the bonuses. But in the budget adopted last month, the General Assembly limited spending to $94.3 million for bonuses.

State legislators have cited the poor economy for the bonus cap.

At schools that meet expectations, teachers will get $527 instead of $750. Teacher assistants will get $263 instead of $375.

At schools that exceed expectations, teachers will get $1,053 instead of $1,500. Teacher assistants will get $351, not $500.

"It's not what we wanted, but it's what we got," said Howard Lee, chairman of the State Board of Education. "We should be grateful we still had something."

The percentage of schools meeting expectations this year jumped 10 percentage points from 71.9 percent the previous year.

The improvement coincides with the State Board of Education's decision to exclude new state end-of-grade reading exams in determining which elementary and middle schools qualify for teacher bonuses.

Only math exams counted for bonus purposes this year, though reading exams will count next year. This year's reading results will be released in November when the state announces its annual, non-monetary awards for schools having high percentages of students passing all state tests.

Other news released on Thursday wasn't as good as the ABC results.

The state's graduation rate stayed flat with 69.9 percent of students graduating from high school in four years, up slightly from 69.5 percent.

Only 39 percent of schools statewide met federal No Child Left Behind standards, down from 45 percent the previous year. The percentage probably will drop further this fall when the results of reading tests are factored in.

Both the state and federal programs use many of same tests, but they evaluate the results differently.

The federal program focuses on the percentage of students who pass state reading and math exams at each school. The goal is to close the achievement gap among various groups of students.

The state's ABCs program focuses more on how well students score on exams. The state looks at the raw scores and uses a formula to measure schoolwide improvement.

State Superintendent June Atkinson said there's no disconnect between the high performance on the ABCs program and the low performance under No Child Left Behind.

"No Child Left Behind is a flawed system for measuring schools," Atkinson said. "The ABCs are much better."

(Staff writer Kinea White Epps contributed to this report.)