AUGUSTA – Legislation proposed by Rep. Brian Bolduc, D-Auburn, that would prevent educators from getting paid based on performance was presented to lawmakers during a public hearing on Monday.

Bolduc’s one-line bill reads: “A salary of a teacher may not be based upon the measurable performance or productivity of the teacher or a student of the teacher.”

“I agree merit pay has some merit, but unlike business performance, teaching performance is much more subjective,” Bolduc said. “Judging good teaching is like judging good art or good music.”

When asked by a committee member if some teachers were better than others, Bolduc, who’s looking for work as a teacher now, said it would be impossible to quantify because all criteria would be opinion based.

Critics of Bolduc’s proposed ban included Maine’s Department of Education, the Maine Heritage Policy Center and Maine’s superintendents and school board associations.

“This bill would limit or curtail common supervisory practices already in place in Maine,” said Education Commissioner Susan Gendron. “All Maine teachers’ ‘performance’ is regularly evaluated by their immediate supervisors and these evaluations are used for contract renewal or non-renewal purposes.”

Banning merit pay may make Maine ineligible for some federal stimulus dollars earmarked for test-piloting such programs, Gendron added.

Bolduc said Gendron’s testimony “twisted things.”

“Parts of her testimony are completely inaccurate and untrue,” he told the committee.

Most Maine teachers are unionized and changes in compensation would have to be approved before being implemented. In the past, members of the Maine Education Association, which includes more than 25,000 teachers, have opposed performance-based pay.

Sandra McArthur of the Maine School Management Association said Bolduc’s bill heads in the opposite direction of national education policy-makers.

“President Barack Obama specifically called for tying teachers’ pay to student performance in his first major address on education last month,” she said. “While pay for performance would not be an easy process to develop, we should at the very least look at it as an option for improving student performance.”

Bolduc said merit pay is a fad that would come and go.

“Obama is wrong on this,” he said. “Senior educators tell me this is going to come and go like lots of other fads in education.”

Bolduc’s House biography notes that he’s a recent graduate of the Graduate Teacher Certification Program at the University of New England and that he plans a career in public education.

The bill is scheduled for a work session on Wednesday.