Kevin Falcon’s merit pay proposal for teachers has been met with much derision, but it’s found at least one fan in Delta School Board Chair Dale Saip.

“I think anytime that you can offer opportunities for teachers to better themselves and have that supported in a financial and in a real way, we need to examine that,” Saip told The Tyee.

“How it’s implemented needs some further discussion, but I think it’s a very important part of how we develop our schools.”

Falcon announced the creation of a Master Teacher Incentive Program, which would provide financial incentives for successful teaching, on January 4 as part of his campaign platform for the Liberal party leadership. He did not specify how teachers would be measured, saying the specifics would be determined after discussions with parents, teachers, and other members of the education community.

Both the BCTF and former education minister, and Liberal leadership rival, George Abbott have spoken out against the idea. The Hook ran a piece yesterday where Charles Ungerleider, former deputy minister of education and current professor of the sociology of education at the University of British Columbia, said educational outcomes have more to do with outside factors such as poverty and parental education, making grading teachers on student performance unfair.

Saip, whose been a member of the board since 1987, says the endorsement is his personal view and not the opinion of the entire Delta board. He believes teachers need incentives and support to prepare themselves for teaching needs of the future—and that doesn’t necessarily mean more degrees, but rather a focus on professional development.

“I think we can improve upon our teaching and our model and make advancements in the system. It’s like business: if you’re not reinventing yourself, someone else is going to do it for you,” he says.

Saip agrees with Ungerleider that a child’s education is affected by outside influences, and says we need to look at issues of poverty and hunger as well as how well teachers are performing. He doesn’t know how teachers should be measured, but he says it shouldn’t be based on students marks or test results, but their “ethics, performance, and ability to deliver.”

“I know there’s some wonderful and some great teachers out there. There’s also some people out there that shouldn’t be teaching, and I think there’s a need for us to reexamine how we do education and how we’re going to do education, and I think the teachers have to be a big part of it, and teacher performance is something that most people would recognize as needing to have some measures.”

Katie Hyslop reports on education for The Tyee.