No on Signing Bonuses

Democrat Martin O'Malley has proposed paying school principals a signing bonus of $200,000 over four years in order to attract high quality principals to troubled schools.

I've generally been impressed by O'Malley's political moves but this one strikes me at first blush as a bad one from both a policy and a politics viewpoint. It would further expand the gap between administrators who are already relatively highly paid and the teachers in the trenches. Moreover, even the best principal cannot do much good if they have little latitude to operate and make changes without approval from the school district.

It is a bad political move because it smacks as a quick fix and a gimmick rather than a serious attempt to continue Maryland's work to improve the schools. It reminds me of Dan Snyder's repeated desperate hiring of new coaches for the Redskins at astronomical prices. Though I suppose the Redskins did make the playoffs last year for the first time in eons.

Maybe O'Malley can modify his idea to more broadly apply the stronger idea of incentives at the heart of the proposed initiative to pay signing bonuses to principals. Continuing to increase teacher pay will help spur the best people to enter into teaching and that our good teachers can afford to stay at it. We can also use incentives to attract teachers as well as administrators to schools which have had difficulties.

Of course, fixing the schools is going to require a lot more. And we can't afford to get a failing grade on this one.