State officials say Arkansas LEARNS merit bonuses motivate teachers, critics call it unfair

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A merit-based program that is part of an overhaul of the Arkansas education system is offering some teachers thousands of dollars in bonuses, though some are calling it an unfair system.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Tuesday that 3,000 teachers will receive $1.500 to $10,000 bonuses through the Merit Teacher Incentive Fund Program, a component of the Arkansas LEARNS Act passed in March 2023.

Education Secretary Jacob Oliva said this comes out to be the top 10% performing teachers in Arkansas.

The governor’s office said that to qualify for the bonuses, teachers must demonstrate outstanding growth in student performance, serve as mentors to aspiring teachers who participate in year-long residencies and/or teach in a subject or region with a critical teacher shortage.

According to the Arkansas Department of Education, bonus recipients were identified using data from the Statewide Information System, the Educator Effectiveness System, the Arkansas Educator Licensure System and student state assessment data.

Even with all of those pieces of data, some critics are saying the information being used to determine the bonuses is not enough.

Gwen Faulkenberry is one of the educators calling the program far too simple, saying bonuses being based on student performance is unfair because every teacher is given a different classroom of students who might struggle more than the next for reasons like poverty, learning challenges or stressors at home.

Faulkenberry said she also fears the program creates a stressful and potentially competitive environment among teachers in a field where they're already struggling to recruit and maintain.

"Once again, we have this thing rolled out like, 'Oh it's just this great huge innovation and it's really going to improve everything,' and the nuance is missing, the respect for the profession is missing," she said.

Oliva contends the program is meant to motivate teachers and believes people will see the benefits of it from teachers in years to come.

"Now that we've gone through a rule-making process and established criteria, it's clear and people now know, 'Hey, if I do lead teacher designation or if I come up and start mentoring aspiring teachers, I'm going to be eligible for some extra additional dollars,'" he said.

There's also the argument among those against this program that if the state had laid out a salary schedule that paid teachers more based on their years of working in education, there would not be a need for this merit program.

Last year, the state raised the starting teacher salary to $50,000 a year, which means in some instances, depending on the district, longtime teachers are making the same as first-year teachers.

"We did raises for everyone. Every teacher in the state of Arkansas has at least a $2,000 raise,” Oliva said. “That raise was larger than any step that the state had provided before. Districts are working on salary schedules that work best for them."

Additional information on the bonus program, including a map showing bonus distribution, may be found at LEARNS.ADE.Arkansas.gov.

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