More about money and motivation

Some readers of today's story about the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools "talent effectiveness project" are skeptical of the notion that money doesn't motivate teachers to do better work.

I admit my eyebrows raised during Tuesday night's board meeting,  when Chief Human Resource Officer Daniel Habrat told the board it's not only ineffective but insulting to tell teachers,  "Here's a dollar;  do a better job."   Habrat came to CMS in March from Wells Fargo/Wachovia,  an industry known for offering quite a few dollars in performance bonuses.  I've never heard that bankers are insulted by that.

The next day,  I asked Habrat to elaborate.  Top performers,  in banking or any other business,  want to excel,  he said.  It's not that the best bankers would slack off without the bonus,  but that the competition could lure them away if pay and bonuses weren't competitive.

The market for teachers,  of course,  is different. Public schools employ the vast majority,  and the pay scale is set mostly by the state  (which has failed to provide experience-based raises or test-score-based bonuses for the last three years).  Mecklenburg County taxpayers provide a supplement to help CMS compete with other N.C.  districts.  Interim Superintendent Hugh Hattabaugh said CMS used to offer the  state's top wages;  now,  he said,  it has fallen to fourth or fifth.

But Habrat said the long-term concern is the good teachers who work four or five years,  hit their stride,  then switch careers to better support a family.  CMS needs to figure out where those teachers are going and what kind of pay it would take to get top performers to enter and stick with teaching.

Of course,  finding the money remains a challenge.  The CMS timeline calls for the superintendent and top central-office staff to start getting part of their pay based on performance this school year,  with school administrators joining them next year.  Habrat said Tuesday that won't happen because the money isn't there.  Instead,  he said,  administrators will have performance-based goals that will be used to help them improve.  By 2013-14,  when teachers are slated to go online with performance pay,  officials would love to have consensus around standards and money to back it up.  But nothing's certain about that.

On Wednesday,  Hattabaugh told reporters he envisions teacher performance pay working much like principal pay:  If there's a 3 percent raise pool,  that doesn't mean everyone gets 3 percent.  A low performer might get nothing that year,  while a principal who meets all goals could get more  (lately, of course, that raise pool has dried up, too).

But,  as Hattabaugh quickly noted,  his gig as superintendent ends this summer.  It'll be up to the new leader to chart the path.