by Krystal Paco

Guam - A grant from the National Governors' Association is funding a study that considers tying a teachers' pay to their performance in the classroom. A special study group has been established to review the idea and whether it could be applied here.

Should teachers be paid based on their performance in the classroom? According to governor's education liaison Vince Leon Guerrero, it's a possibility as the National Governors' Association has partnered with non-profit organizations to bring resources to improve public education. Small grants were provided to some states and territories interested in finding a way to evaluate teachers' performance.

He said, "They're going to try to bring examples from across the nation of ways they're evaluating teachers; they're going to bring in experts to tell us this is what research says are effective ways of bringing evaluation into the system so we can improve the outcomes for students."

The $35,000 grant will be used by the study group to develop a process that would allow these policies to eventually become adopted. "The goals for the project are to engage stakeholders and policymakers in a process to develop and plan to implement policies to evaluate teacher effectiveness," said Leon Guerrero.

Leon Guerrero says the current system of evaluating the 2,000 public school teachers on the island is outdated. The group, which includes a Guam Education Board member, a teacher, a principal and a member of the Guam legislature, will also have to work with the board that is currently in negotiations for a contract that would determine teacher working conditions. "Currently the board is stuck in this negotiation phase," he confirmed. "We're hoping they'll be able to work with the team on trying to update these evaluation policies."

"What we're going to be looking at is the most controversial components of teacher evaluations systems," he said. Leon Guerrero adds part of the evaluation could be reviewing how students perform on SAT-10 tests.

How teachers feel about the idea remains to be seen.