Smith: Attention all teachers in Arizona

As your state senator (who also happens to live here in Maricopa), I often reach out to the people of our great city to ask for input on legislation I am working on, and this time I need input from teachers from all grade levels and subjects areas in K-12 education.

In this upcoming session, I will be introducing performance-pay legislation to provide an opportunity for great teachers in Arizona to be properly compensated for their achievements in the classroom.

So that you know my background, I come from a family of teachers and currently serve on the Senate Education committee. My wife, brother, sister, cousin, and mother-in-law are all currently teaching and my step-father was a teacher in inner-city Detroit for 40 years — so this issue is near and dear to me.

I have spent countless hours researching a multitude of models and discussing the feasibility of different options with the Department of Education, superintendents and principals.

What I need now is the most important part — feedback from the people this bill is designed to help — the teachers themselves. Too many times we find that when the government creates laws it does not consult with the very people the laws affect, but not this time.

The goal of this legislation is to have a fair and uniform set of standards in place, unlike the current method. K-12 teachers would have a clear understanding of what results are necessary in order to collect their performance pay, which would be in addition to their regular base salary.

The criteria would not comprise just from standardized testing results, but from an array of other indicators like in-class testing, overall student class performance, overall performance of the school, in-class observations, etc.