It's time to fix the way we rate our teachers

launches a three-day series of stories about teachers. Our reporting seeks to find out how we evaluate teachers, how that process can be improved and what that might look like in north central Wisconsin.There are not many public institutions as important as our schools. And there are not many matters of public policy that can become so heated so quickly than discussions of educationThat's not a reason to avoid the topic. And with merit pay legislation likely to be introduced in the Legislature this fall, teacher evaluations are not a topic any of us will likely be able to avoid.We've expressed support for the introduction of some form of merit pay for teachers -- a position we share with the Obama administration, the Gov. Scott Walker administration and the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teachers union. It's worth taking the time to explain whyHere's something we know: Good people want to work with good people. The feeling of being part of a winning team is a motivator in any workplace. Professionals want to know that they'll be rewarded for doing good work. Those rewards, quite appropriately, often take the form of money.That's not to say that any teacher is motivated primarily by a paycheck. For many in the profession, teaching is a vocation and a passion.And yet the way incentives work today, by far the most important determiners for raises have nothing to do with whether you're a great teacher with a dynamic classroom. Instead, raises are determined by simple seniority measurements and whether teachers achieve a new higher education degree.To be sure, professional development is important, and seniority is associated with raises in many professions. But these measurements leave out a crucial component, and that is a judgment of teaching quality itself. Leaving out any consideration of student test scores from teacher evaluations entirely is unacceptable.This is an area of disagreement between teachers and non-teachers, as illustratedsurvey last month. Seventy percent of respondents who are not teachersstudent test scores should be one of the three most important factors in evaluating teachers. Among those who self-identified as teachers, fewer than 40 percent did.We need to see this gap bridged. We need teacher evaluations to include measures, both objective and subjective, of how their students are doing. What other point can there be in evaluating teachers?We also need a process that is fair and accounts for the many factors that can drive student achievement. Local school districts should involve teachers in the process of reforming their evaluation systems. We all know there are great teachers in every local school building. Teachers who excel are an important resource in this undertaking.