Teacher merit raises: $500 or $5,000?

I'm getting a lot of questions about a story in this morning's paper about the plan to offer four-year contracts to a limited number of teachers as tenure is phased out.

In the past, I've referred to it as a $500-a-year raise, which is the language in the budget bill.  T. Keung Hui,  my counterpart at the News & Observer and the lead writer on today's story,  called it a $5,000 raise.  People are understandably confused.

Hui used the four-year cumulative raise provided by $500 annual bumps.  The first year, a teacher who takes the four-year package will make $500 more than counterparts who don't get the raise.  The second year that teacher gets another $500 bump, so now she's $1,000 ahead of peers.  The third year she's up by $1,500 and the fourth by $2,000. If you add up the extra for those four years,  it comes to a total of $5,000.   The key is that the $500 specified in the law is a pay raise, not just a series of annual bonuses.