BANGOR – Independent candidate for governor Barbara Merrill detailed her plan to provide merit pay for teachers, telling a Bangor audience Wednesday the financial incentive will help the state attract highly qualified teachers and improve students’ academic performances.

“Every successful business rewards extra skill and commitment, and there is no business more important than educating our children,” Merrill, the state representative from Appleton, told a lunchtime meeting of the Bangor Lion’s Club.

Merrill’s call for a merit-pay system, while mentioned in her pre-campaign book, “Setting the Maine Course,” came as a surprise to officials in the Maine Education Association.

The MEA, a statewide union that represents roughly 25,000 teachers, has long opposed merit pay proposals for a host of reasons, according to Mark Gray, the union’s executive director. Upon reviewing the basics of the Merrill plan, he said it, too, was based on a flawed premise and would not win favor among MEA members.

“It’s based on the idea that teachers are only giving 80 percent, and if you give them extra money, they’ll give 100 percent,” said Gray, whose organization endorsed Democrat John Baldacci’s re-election bid in August. “Teachers are in the classroom giving 100 percent every day.”

Under Merrill’s plan – based on the work of a University of Pennsylvania professor – a teacher’s success would be measured by how far each of his or her students progressed during the school year. If a class on average shows marked improvement from where the students started the school year, that teacher would deserve merit pay.

When questioned about how Merrill would pay for the program – and others she presented at the Wednesday forum in Bangor – Merrill repeated her campaign’s call to tame overall state spending to free money up for these new programs.

Gray said in a later interview he’d like to see the money Merrill hopes to spend on merit increases put into existing programs – such as mentoring – designed to improve teacher performance.