BOSTON, Sept. 29 - Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts has a bold plan to improve public education in his state. It involves new laptops for students, new science and math teachers and, the most ambitious component of all, merit pay tied to classroom performance that could add $5,000 or more to a teacher's annual salary.
"The ability to close the achievement gap is the civil rights issue of our generation," Mr. Romney said in an interview, noting concern over test scores as well as the country's lagging production of scientists and engineers. "This is the way to do it."
He is betting large sums that his plan can work. The overhaul package he announced last week calls for $46 million in new spending for the 2006 fiscal year and $143 million for 2007.
The part of the plan that raises salaries through merit pay is building on a nascent movement around the country to turn away from a salary structure based on the number of academic degrees and years of service.
Currently, Arizona, Florida, Iowa, New Mexico and North Carolina have systems that give teachers extra pay for classroom performance. Five other states - Arkansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Oklahoma and South Carolina - use money from the Milken Family Foundation for teacher development programs that can lead to higher salaries.
But more efforts are under way, even with resistance from the nation's leading teacher unions, which have historically opposed merit pay programs as unfair and divisive.
Minnesota is moving toward a statewide effort with a plan to combine career advancement, professional development and extra pay, as much as $2,000 a year, all linked to student achievement.
In Denver, a ballot initiative next month will ask voters to approve raising property taxes $25 million a year to allow public school teachers to qualify for thousands of dollars in bonuses and salary increases. Polls say the measure will pass easily.
Further, the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence, an education reform group, is working for the Bush administration to develop a national merit pay plan for the states that would help identify master teachers and get them bonuses or raises.
Each state program works in a different way, but they all share the basic concept of measuring classroom performance to determine how much extra a teacher can make.
Some involve substantial spending, like $884 million over 10 years in North Carolina; others spend much less, like $2 million over four years in Iowa. But no other state provides as much as Massachusetts would pay if the Legislature adopts Mr. Romney's plan, which draws on the state's current budget surplus.
Early response to it has been mixed. State lawmakers and union leaders have criticized it as inadequate to deal with the more entrenched problems of public education and as unfair for limiting the number of teachers who can qualify for a $5,000 bonus offered to teachers in three categories: those who teach Advanced Placement courses, those recruited to teach science and math, and the top one-third of teachers in each school district as measured by classroom improvement.
Under the program, a newly recruited teacher of Advanced Placement science who excels in the classroom could make an extra $15,000 a year.
Critics of the plan also view it as politically motivated.
As a telegenic, first-term conservative Republican, Mr. Romney is widely considered a presidential contender for 2008, playing to a wider audience with everything he does. Education overhaul that features a market approach to setting teachers' salaries has generally enjoyed much wider popularity with Republicans.
So here in Massachusetts, a liberal state served by Republican governors for the last 15 years, a clash is inevitable. The co-chairmen of the education committee in the Democratic-controlled Legislature, who are sympathetic to the state's teachers unions, say Mr. Romney's goals could be better achieved with a more fundamental approach to education overhaul, like building more classrooms, spending more for texts and raising salaries across the board.
Mostly, they object to his merit pay system, calling it exclusionary and potentially dangerous for pitting teachers against each other.
"It's more of a political statement," said Senator Robert R. Antonioni, a Democrat who shares the committee leadership with Representative Patricia A. Haddad, a former teacher who is also a Democrat. "It plays to those who feel the teaching profession is inadequate by trying to walk around the rank and file."
Mr. Romney insists that the current pay structure for teachers fails to meet new challenges facing the country, especially the need to produce more scientists and engineers. That is why critical parts of the plan, he said, are giving every student a laptop and recruiting new teachers for math and science.
"I'm looking for change, and I'll spend money for change on the potential that it'll make a difference," he said. "If something doesn't work, we'll try something else. But you can't keep spending more money the same way and expect different results. That's the definition of crazy."
Mr. Antonioni and Ms. Haddad said they would like some of Mr. Romney's ideas, including the laptops, if he could explain what would happen when one broke, one was stolen or they became obsolete. They also liked his goal of improving test scores in science and math.
But overall, they said, his approach to improving performance through merit pay seems better suited to a private school system.
"We're not saying we're not going to work with him, but let's talk about how he is going to support public education," Ms. Haddad said. "My fear is that he doesn't really believe in public education, and if that's the case, discussion will be stifled."
Paul Grogan, president of the Boston Foundation, a private community development group that helped create Mr. Romney's plan, conceded that the governor had a tough sell.
The key to change, Mr. Grogan said, is pulling together divergent constituencies, like business groups, minority communities and union leaders, to put pressure on the Democratic leaders of the Legislature.
It is unlikely to be easy, not least because of union resistance.
"His proposals are short on substance, long on politics," said Catherine A. Boudreau, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, a branch of the National Education Association. As for merit pay, Ms. Boudreau added, "They are inequitable, divisive and ineffective."
Kathleen A. Kelley, president of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers, said that Mr. Romney's plan was developed with no one from the education community.
Mr. Romney dismissed the criticism, saying he had heard it all before.
"It takes time. You've got to sell it," he said. "It's hard to get the public to support everything, but this is a multiyear effort. We have to chip away, chip away, chip away."
He paused a moment.
"You know," he said, "I would just love it if you could just throw out all the special interests from education."