Forever, it seems, education has been a one-way meritocracy. While students are endlessly evaluated for their performance and productivity, their instructors have resisted having similar measurements apply to their compensations as professionals.

It’s called merit pay. Few issues have been more controversial in education until now, as performance-based salaries has found a strong endorser in President Barack Obama. In turn, this has prompted many in education to open merit pay for discussion.

A bill before the Legislature, however, would stop this conversation in Maine before it starts. Rep. Brian Bolduc, D-Auburn, has introduced LD 817 to prohibit consideration of teacher salary based on merit. It goes to public hearing on April 6.

With this bill, lawmakers are given a simple choice: support or reject merit pay. We urge them to support it, not because it’s a panacea for education, but because it needs to be studied and tested. It needs a chance to thrive or fail, not just be snuffed out of existence.

Bolduc, a newly minted teacher, is a devout opponent of merit pay. But if he was looking for support from Maine’s educational leaders, he might be wanting. In the past weeks, both Education Commissioner Susan Gendron and the head of the Maine Education Association, Mark Gray, have expressed qualified support publicly for examining a merit-based system.

This support, however lukewarm it might sound, is still a ringing endorsement for merit pay, because it has never enjoyed much political traction, despite its usually broad popular appeal.

A change of perspective, though, doesn’t alter the inherent challenges of creating a fair merit pay framework. This is the chief complaint of critics – how are we going to do this? – and it is quite valid. Merit pay sounds great in concept, but is miserable in practice.

What is universally disliked is tying teacher salary to student performance. Not only is this unreliable, in that it tries to draw a straight conclusion through innumerable variables, but it is also too simplistic. The true measure of a teacher is not found in student’s grades alone.

Nor is every school district alike, to allow for standardized evaluations of teachers from place-to-place. An effective teacher in Lewiston, for example, may not be in Farmington. (Or maybe even Auburn.) Considerations like these make designing a merit system yeoman’s work.

President Obama has his shoulder to the wheel, however. So should Maine. If merit pay is a philosophy that will direct federal education policy for years to come, the state’s thinking should run parallel, not deliberately deviate from this path through shortsighted legislation.

Rep. Bolduc has an opinion on the issue, and by putting forth this bill to prohibit this practice he has, in essence, forced the question. Should merit pay be considered for teachers in Maine? Yea or Nay?

We say yes. Merit pay merits further discussion.