Last year, the North Carolina General Assembly passed legislation that awards teachers of Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses $50 for each student who passes the exam, with a cap at $2,000 per teacher.

In the same legislation, third-grade teachers with high student-score growth were awarded bonuses if their scores fell into the top-25 percent of growth scores in the state, as well as in the local district.

Concerns about the fairness of this type of performance-based bonus system still continue even months down the line. Some feel it is unfair to teachers in other grades or lower-level courses, while others believe these high testing scores correlate to the teacher’s work and should be rewarded.

Depending on the types of students in a classroom, teachers in lower-level courses may have to work much harder than those teaching AP-level classes. A lot of AP students are naturally intelligent and possess more self-motivation than many of their peers.

Another aspect is the schools’ population. Rewarding teachers in larger cities who may teach multiple AP classes, in comparison to a small town that has fewer students, is not fair to teachers who work just as hard in rural counties.

The General Assembly tapped into a better solution with the growth-based measure for third-grade teachers.

Teachers may work extremely hard every day and still have a few students trailing behind and making failing grades. A lot of times it is not the teacher’s fault — it’s the students’ attitude or level of motivation. There is too much discrepancy for this to be a fair measure of success.

However, by measuring growth, the actual score is not as important as the score in comparison to other years. Students cannot realistically improve by leaps and bounds overnight, but seeing that growth is a sure sign there is a teacher pushing those students to be better.

Growth is certainly not a perfect measure of success, but it is a more accurate one than only assessing a batch of exam scores each year.