Iowa DOGE spins the classics

President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, had the world’s richest man wielding a chain saw while spawning chaos in federal agencies.

Tough to top that.

Iowa’s DOGE Task Force, a group of mostly business leaders appointed by Gov. Kim Reynolds in a flattering homage to Trump’s wrecking ball, has been much calmer.

No chain saws. No chaos. And very few new ideas.

Its highest profile proposed recommendations, shared last week, are classic rock. Familiar, but hardly groundbreaking.

Take “merit” pay for public schoolteachers.

Iowa spent roughly the first 13 years of this century talking about what was called “pay for performance.” Iowa lawmakers, back when the Golden Dome of Wisdom was more purple than Prince, took on the issue at least three times.

There was 2001, when Republicans pushed for replacing the teacher pay compensation system with pay for performance. But they had to compromise with Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack. He signed a $40 million bill allowing districts to set achievement goals for each school building, where all teachers would be eligible for bonuses.

"This is landmark legislation, but it certainly isn't finished yet," Vilsack said at the time.

And he was right.

In 2007, a Democratically controlled Legislature created a pilot program testing performance-based pay in three districts. It did not lead to state-level changes.

In 2013, Gov. Terry Branstad proposed a wide-ranging public school reform agenda, which included an increase in starting pay and a career pathway for teachers to become mentors and masters who share wisdom with other teachers. That idea also came from a task force.

Despite all those ladders, pilots and pathways, the idea of paying purely for performance never caught on. For one thing, “merit” pay discourages collaboration as teachers compete for pay raises Public schoolteachers have no control over who will be in their classrooms and what challenges they’ll bring.

And what about teachers who teach music, physical education and other classes that aren’t on standardized tests?

Student achievement has slipped. It must be a lack of “merit” pay. Or maybe it’s because districts are patching their budgets with bubble gum and twine as the state provides paltry annual funding increases.

Last November, Reynolds announced Teachers Accelerated Learning Grants providing $8.5 million split between school districts to pay teachers who boost student achievement. Applications were closed in January, but there’s been no announcement I can find as to who received grants.

So, “merit” pay is a golden oldie. Maybe today’s ideas ain’t got the same soul.

Same with replacing IPERS pensions with 401ks prevalent in the private sector.

We’ve got to run government more like as business, we’re told, again. That means making state workers accept the same benefits as corporate drones, who love them, trust me.

Serves them right for serving the public.

Branstad talked for years about transforming IPERS into a 401K-style system, but the idea went nowhere and is unlikely to happen even in our red state era.

Iowa DOGE does have dozens of other ideas. Maybe we’ll create a “red tape hotline” where Iowans can report regulatory barriers. Perhaps more state systems should be moved to the cloud. How about using robots and AI to do repetitive tasks?

The task force’s final recommendations are due in September. They will be immediately stored in the cloud by a robot.

(319) 398-8262; todd.dorman@thegazette.com