The president talks it up. The education secretary is for it. But if you read Katherine Poythress‘ examination of teacher compensation this week, one thing that stood out was that performance pay for teachers barely seems on the radar in Hawaii.

It’s not like Hawaii’s public schools don’t face many of the same challenges in raising student achievement that schools in other states do. Or that we’re doing so well. The state is generally closer to the bottom than to the top in national comparisons.

But paying teachers based on the quality or impact of their work doesn’t seem to be on the table here.

Let’s start with some givens.

• Teaching is hard work.

• The quality of a teacher is the most important factor in how much students learn, grow.

• Teachers deserve to be paid well for their efforts.

A compensation system based almost entirely on rewarding longevity doesn’t work when people have so many other occupational opportunities.

To his credit, Garrett Toguchi, chairman of the Hawaii State Board of Education, did raise the issue of performance pay in his interview with Katherine.

“Teachers should be able to make more money as determined by the market,” he told her. “A school looking for an excellent math teacher should be allowed to pay a premium (to compete) to an excellent math teacher, they should be allowed to offer signing incentives, performance incentives and periodic contracts (all on top of the union minimum). This is no different from the NFL or NBA, both of which have unions.”

But Toguchi restricted the concept to difficult to fill positions. President Obama goes further.

“Too many supporters of my party have resisted the idea of rewarding excellence in teaching with extra pay, even though we know it can make a difference in the classroom,” he told the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce last year.

At that time, in response to his remarks, national teachers union leaders said they could support merit-pay plans as long as they are fair to teachers.

There are different ways to look at how teachers are paid in Hawaii. But one thing is clear, as hard as many teachers work, their work year is much different — and more attractive — than the work year of many others.

Teachers are paid for a 10-month year. In addition, they are eligible for 13 holidays, 16 vacation days, 18 sick days (that they can carry over and earn pension credit with) and five personal days, or up to 52 additional days a year. Plus they, unlike most of us in the private sector, are eligible for indexed pensions. So instead of comparing pay, it’s important to look at total compensation, when considering teachers and other government positions.

A compensation system that has base minimum pay levels but gives teachers the opportunity to earn more, especially early in their career when things like pensions aren’t top of mind, would help them feel more recognized and rewarded for their work. It would help attract more and better candidates to the profession.

The U.S. Senate has one sitting senator, Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, who has run an urban school district. (I happen to know him well from my days as a journalist in that state.) Bennet recently wrote on the issue of teacher compensation and retention.

“Our current system of hiring and compensation, designed deep in the last century, is utterly inadequate for attracting new teachers to the profession and keeping the ones we already have in the classroom,” he wrote. “The system we have now was designed in a time where women’s career choices were limited to being a nurse or a teacher. In order to support current teachers and attract new ones, we need to make systemic changes in the way we recruit, train, develop, support, pay and promote teachers.”

Even though Hawaii is dominated by a single party — the party of Obama and Bennet — closely aligned with unions, it doesn’t mean it, too, can’t evaluate whether its current approach to teacher compensation is the best one. It doesn’t mean that it, too, can’t change. It should do what is best for the students. And what’s best for the students is for teachers to feel supported and highly motivated. Performance pay is one way to do that.

We tried to start a conversation about teacher compensation and how best to structure it to elevate student achievement at Civil Beat this week. We’re already working to do more on the related topic of whether bad teachers are being weeded out after being given a chance to improve.

As the president said in his 2009 speech: “It’s time to start rewarding good teachers, stop making excuses for bad ones.”

The teachers of Hawaii deserve our support, financial and otherwise. But the best kind of support isn’t unconditional.