When it comes to considering performance when we pay public school teachers, it’s been a long, strange trip.

More accurately, it’s been a long, strange TRI.

TRI is the acronym used to describe how local levy dollars are supposed to be doled out as supplemental pay. Created in the mid-1980s, the program was designed to compensate teachers for extra Time, Responsibility and Incentive. It would come on top of the base salary money from Olympia.

TRI began life as TRIP, with the “P” standing for performance. But performance was deemed a semantic stand-in for merit, and teachers unions opposed merit pay. Unfair, they said. Subjective, they argued. Democrats who controlled Olympia let TRIP become TRI.

Over the years, however, most school districts stopped bothering with the “t,” the “r” and the “i.” Many instead distribute local levy money to all teachers across the board the same way state money is distributed – by years of experience and amount of education.

Some districts, Tacoma included, don’t even require teachers to keep a log of time spent on committees or grading papers in order to receive supplemental pay.

According to the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, the average base salary for a state teacher is $46,549, and the average supplemental contract is $7,097 – for a total of $53,646. The best teachers are paid the same as the worst teachers.

Other than staying in the job and getting additional college credits, there are few ways for teachers to increase their pay. And change isn’t likely because performance pay is considered too hot politically.

Last legislative session, Gov. Chris Gregoire tried to go there, slowly. She proposed a $5,000 annual bonus for teachers who achieve National Board Certification and additional $5,000 bonuses if they take their skills to struggling schools and are certified in math and science.

The first bonus is to both encourage and compensate teachers who take on the rigorous demands of national board certification. Only about 1,300 have made that grade but as many as 400 more try each year.

The second is an attempt to reverse the fact that the toughest schools have the least-experienced teachers. The final bonus was designed to help address the shortage of math and science teachers, a shortage that hits struggling schools especially hard.

The first two bonus requests survived the Legislature, but the math-and-science bonus fell victim to Washington Education Association opposition. Judy Hartmann, Gregoire’s education adviser, said there are no plans to pursue incentive pay proposals next session.

“This is the first time we’ve ever done anything like this,” she said. “Let’s see how it goes.”

While Olympia waits, however, Washington, D.C., might move ahead. A draft revision of the No Child Left Behind Act includes federal grants to give exemplary teachers bonuses of up to $12,500 per year and exemplary principals up to $15,000 if they work in struggling schools. The highest bonuses would be given to those who teach math and science.

Teachers would be identified not just by student test-score improvement, but also through evaluations by principals and master teachers.

The draft requires that performance pay plans be developed in collaboration with teachers unions. It also demands that districts first make progress on reducing class size, ensuring adequate supplies and materials, modernizing buildings and enhancing school safety.

The architect of the bill, House Education Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., calls it a way to give incentives to teachers – especially young ones – who watch their peers in other fields get rewarded for ingenuity and performance.

“In teaching,” Miller told The Washington Post, “you go as fast as the slowest person.”

Peter Callaghan: 253-597-8657

peter.callaghan@thenewstribune.com