'Why Not Take Advantage?'

It turns out that Prince George's teachers like the idea of linking their pay to performance.

OF ALL THE remarkable aspects of Prince George's County's pay-for-performance initiative for educators, the most impressive is how it is being received. Teachers and principals are eager to participate. They are unafraid of linking their salaries to students' test scores, and that confidence is a hopeful sign for improving student learning.

Teachers and principals from 12 schools will have the chance to bump up their pay by as much as $10,000 under a pilot program to be offered in the coming school year. The aim is to reward and retain those teachers who are so effective that they literally make the difference in what a child learns. Half of the bonus is tied to scores on state tests, and that makes the Prince George's experiment the most aggressive in the nation. Other criteria include evaluations and teaching in hard-to-staff areas. The program is being funded with a $17.1 million federal grant, and the aim is to slowly expand it to other schools in the system.

Given the historic resistance of national teacher unions to linking performance and pay, it is to the credit of the local union that its members were willing to follow the lead of the county's reform-minded school superintendent, John E. Deasy. It helped that participation in the program is voluntary and that Mr. Deasy involved local union officials in the drafting of the plan. Nonetheless, we were struck by the comments of teachers such as Beverly Acors, who essentially called participation in the plan a no-brainer. "Every day, I give my 100 percent," she told The Post's Nelson Hernandez, "so if there's an extra incentive, why not take advantage?" Ms. Acors is a perfect example of why more and more districts across the country are toying with new ways to compensate teachers. Good teachers know they have nothing to fear from a system that takes results into account. In fact, they -- like their students -- can only benefit.