Democratic state Sen. Rebecca Millett’s recently submitted bill, An Act to Improve the Quality of Teachers, is an attempt to right the ship of Maine’s public education system. However, the Legislature would be wise to quash it, since it would almost certainly add another mandate to local taxpayers, one we doubt will be funded as promised.

Millett, who represents South Portland, Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth, has done yeoman’s work for the bill, L.D. 1370. In it, she calls for four major changes to the way teachers are hired and compensated:

• The bill would pay teachers a starting salary of at least $40,000 a year, starting in the 2016-2017 school year. The state would reimburse towns for the expenditure through state subsidy.

• The bill requires all incoming teachers to have earned a grade point average of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale during college.

• New teacher applicants would need to complete a student-teaching practicum of at least one academic year started in their sophomore year and then 24 weeks, rather than the current 15 weeks, of student-teaching experience in their senior year.

• The legislation requires all new teachers to receive a master’s degree before being hired. Teachers already in the system would need to acquire a master’s degree within five years of renewing their teacher’s license.

Except for funding mechanism, which relies on the state to reimburse towns for their added teacher costs, Millett’s bill would likely increase the quality of our teachers. We’d all like to see teachers held to higher standards – just as their students seem to be with all this incessant testing since No Child Left Behind came into effect – and earn master’s degrees and excellent grade point averages. But in the real world, these measures sound heavy-handed, something we’re sure teachers’ unions won’t, and shouldn’t, welcome.

The proposal to require a 3.0 in college fails in our books since all colleges and college courses are not created equal. A 3.0 at a school that accepts 80 percent of applicants is not the same 3.0 at a college like Bowdoin or Colby that accepts only the cream of the crop. Should Maine students not be taught by someone who got a 2.9 at Bates? Of course not. Likewise, all subject areas are not equally rigorous, so a 3.0 in one major may not be equal to a 3.0 in another major.

Millett’s proposal that all teachers need a master’s degree sounds good on its face, but falls flat when considering the expense of a master’s degree. While new teachers would earn more starting out, a master’s degree is expensive and student debt payments would likely equal or exceed the new starting pay rate. Also, education level does not indicate one’s level of passion for a certain subject. History is filled with innovators who never went to college, let alone graduate school. Plus, teachers tend to study education at the master’s level, and the last thing we need are more teachers educated in the theoretical jargon an education degree provides. A master’s degree may mean a person knows more, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to be a better teacher. We’ve all had teachers who might have known a lot but weren’t effective since they had lost their enthusiasm or couldn’t wrangle the attention of students.

While we like the idea of raising teachers’ pay, this proposal is also problematic because we’ve learned not to trust legislators when they promise a program will be fully funded by state subsidy. Ever heard of L.D. 1? A decade after that was enacted, we’ve yet to see the state fund local education at the magic 55 percent called for in the bill. Besides Millett’s bill creating yet another unfunded mandate, a $40,000 per year salary goes a lot further in northern Maine than in other areas of the state. We wonder how less affluent school districts would fare when, once the state fails to fund the new teachers’ salaries, local taxpayers would need to cover the difference. And it wouldn’t be only new teachers getting a pay raise. It’s likely unions would call for increases across the board since the bill effectively jacks up the new “minimum wage” for teachers.

Millett’s ideas falter in places, but she’s spot on when she calls for increases to on-the-job training in the form of more student teaching experience. We believe that kind of apprenticeship would pay dividends down the line, if would-be teachers were paired with high-achieving teacher-mentors. If that’s the only portion of the bill to survive, we’re sure that would help improve the quality of Maine’s teachers.

-John Balentine, managing editor