The Utah Legislature decided this year to fund performance-pay pilot programs despite hacking away at education generally with the budget ax made necessary by declining revenues. A $20 million proposal was eliminated, but $300,000 was approved for a much smaller pilot involving five elementary schools. That shows lawmakers' determination to reward excellent teachers, a concept we support wholeheartedly.

But we offer our support with a caveat: The extra pay should go only to teachers who excel under the program's guidelines. Past attempts at incentive-pay systems in Utah have been killed by teacher unions that demanded all teachers get a chunk of the money and administrators who refused to limit bonuses or higher salaries to the best teachers. If that is allowed to happen again, the money earmarked for a two-year experiment at five schools will have been wasted.

The performance pay funding allocated last spring will be handed out to teachers and classroom support staff that rate highest based on these criteria: 40 percent on student test results and other measures of achievement, 40 percent on the quality of classroom instruction, and 20 percent on evaluations by parents, students and peers, and community satisfaction.

It's important that rankings are based less than half on student achievement. We agree with teacher unions that many factors beyond a teacher's control can affect test results. A teacher who excels in the classroom and gets a thumbs up from students, parents and peers should not be penalized because her students do not speak English or their parents can't help with homework and thus they don't do well on tests. That said, we do believe student progress must be considered.

The tough part, we realize, will be how to measure excellence in each of the three criteria, but it is not an impossible task, despite what some educators would have us believe. The state funds are available to help the five schools figure that out. State education officials should closely examine the individual school proposals to make sure standards are not set so that all teachers qualify.

Professionals in the private sector are judged by their supervisors based on similar criteria and salary raises are based on these evaluations. The argument that teaching is unique and can't be evaluated based on such measurements is bunk.

Increased pay is not only an incentive for teachers to improve but a reward for excellence -- but only when the system is fair and not all-inclusive.