We’ve been fans of Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, but this latest gambit to spend $330 million to placate his adversaries seems highly inadvisable.

Is he giving a bonus to the very teachers union members in Georgia who torpedoed his school choice bill this year? Why? This violates the first rule of warfare: know thine enemy.

Worse yet, an across-the-board pay raise not tied to merit only reinforces all the deficiencies of our public school system. Bad teachers are almost never fired, everyone is treated the same, and excellence isn’t rewarded.

Then there is the question: a raise for what? Georgia ranks 37th out of the 50 states on education according to WalletHub and the school performance is so bad that the state has started phasing out A to F grades so students and teachers won’t be held accountable. Less than one in three Georgia 8th graders are proficient in reading or math, while 400,000 students are chronically absent.

With performance like this many teachers should be handed a pink slip, not a $1,000 pat on the back.