A bill providing tax credits to teachers in California is making its way through the state’s legislature. Last month Andy Rotherham and I wrote that Senate Bill 807, the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Act, is a gimmicky way to pay teachers more and takes a one-size-fits-all approach to solving a targeted teacher shortage problem.

It looks like the authors of SB807 may have noticed our critique. Since its introduction, the legislation has been revised. Instead of exempting all teachers who remain in the profession for more than five years from paying state taxes, the revised legislation is focused on teachers in high-poverty communities. The new language gives teachers in high-poverty schools immediate state tax relief on half of their income in their sixth through tenth years of teaching.
Admittedly, the revised legislation is better than the original because it takes a more targeted approach to teacher shortage issues. But it’s still a bad idea. As Andy and I wrote, if California legislators want to pay teachers more, then they should just pay teachers more. Providing teachers with tax incentives is a confusing way to raise teacher compensation and doesn’t get at the foundational issues of under-resourced schools and misaligned, archaic state and district teacher compensation systems. This bill — in any form — tinkers at the edges of and distracts from larger issues in California.
This week the bill passed the California Senate Governance and Finance Committee with a unanimous vote, and it’s now headed to the Senate Education Committee. But California lawmakers would be better off if they stop trying to revive this bill and, instead, focus on the larger school finance problems in the state.