Washington, D.C. Public Schools

Michelle Rhee, the Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools believes educators are tired of being in a system that does not recognize, reward and value people for the incredibly hard work they are doing every single day. Rhee is in favor of merit pay. Not only does she want to recognize teachers she wants to reward them. She wants to pay them a lot of money--more than $100,000, compared with the national average salary of $47,600.

Her proposed two-tier pay structure system would offer teachers two tracks, a green track and a red track.

Educators who give the "green light" would get a more substantial raise and would be financially rewarded based on how well their students perform. The catch is that they would have to give up their tenure and be on probation for one year.

Teachers opposed to taking on the probation risk would have the "red light" option, which allows them to keep their tenure. These teachers would get a raise worth less than their "green light" counterparts, and would not be eligible for performance-based bonuses.

Rhee's program reduces the focus on "input differentials", such as a teacher holding a master's degree. In traditional models such factors typically guarantee a higher pay scale. Instead, it would emphasize student outcomes and evaluate teachers' ability to "move students from point A to point B". No specific measurement for those evaluations have yet been determined. Rhee does not expect all kids to move up at the same rate but rather that all kids move up. Rhee's goal is to reward strong teachers and purge incompetent ones and weaken the tenure system that keeps bad teachers in the classroom. At this time negotiations with the teacher's union are still on the table. However, the Office of the State Superintendent announced plans to tie teacher licensing to student achievement, sidestepping the union and giving Rhee the power to fire underperforming teachers.

Next Meeting Scheduled

Hello All.

Thank you to everyone who has posted their summaries of the existing performance pay plans. As I discussed in an email earlier, we will not meet on February 16 due to President’s Day. It has been challenging to find an alternative date, so I have simply moved our next meeting to April 6 which was our planned next meeting anyway.

Keep blogging!

Paul

Project SMART – Houston Independent School District

Project SMART (Strategies for Motivating and Rewarding Teachers) focuses on teacher effectiveness and growth in student learning at the school, individual teacher, and principal levels. The incentive structure is comprised of three strands.

STRAND I: School value-added analysis of multiple years of data from the SAT-10 and TAKS.

STRAND II: Rewards core instructional staff for individual efforts at improving classroom/student test scores based on value-added analysis. In order to include more teachers, there are four parts of this strand to ensure the inclusion of the maximum number of core teachers in PK-12.

STRAND III: Rewards instructional staff for cooperative efforts at achieving or maintaining the Recognized or Exemplary performance of their students.

Principals will be eligible for rewards based on school performance in Strand I and Strand III, and on student value-added performance for Strand II.

The maximum reward for teachers is $3,000, increasing to $7,600 by the sixth year.

The SAS® EVAAS® system of value-added data, designed by William Sanders, is used to determine the impact of each teacher's instruction on learning.

Formative and summative evaluations are being conducted to determine the effectiveness of the Project SMART model.

Alaska Teacher and Principal Incentive Project

The Alaska Teacher and Principal Incentive Project combines components of merit-, knowledge, and performance-based compensation systems where performance rewards are based on a growth model for monitoring student achievement. The project will focus on teachers and principals who increase student achievement in math; build capacity for math instruction and principal leadership; and increase the overall number of highly-qualified math teachers in rural Alaska.
Incentives:
Incentives based on growth in student achievement at the school and classroom level are the primary components of the plan, followed by incentives for teachers and principals related to their performance evaluation, professional development, and for assumption of additional responsibility. Incentives based on student achievement include schoolwide growth rewards ($2,500-$5,500); annual incentives for math teachers ($750-$2250); and rewards for developing math individual learning plans ($750-$2250). Teacher performance incentives range from $250-$1000 and include teacher performance and evaluation, as well as Professional Growth (Plan-Implement-Evaluate-Refine – PIER) Plans for teacher leadership and math instruction. Additional responsibility incentives range from $1,500-$3,000 and include compensation for work beyond the contract day such as math tutoring, principal contract work, and mentoring during and after regular school hours. Other incentives include bonuses ($2,000-$4,000) for teachers who are highly qualified in math.

REAL Program in Chicago

In July 2006, the Chicago Public School System (CPS) entered into a collaboration agreement with the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching (NIET) to fund a Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) requesting federal funds to implement the Recognizing Excellence in Academic Leadership (REAL) program. In November 2006, the U.S. Department of Education awarded a $27.5 million TIF grant to CPS to implent the REAL program. The foundation for REAL is a whole school reform model that is designed to increase student achievement by improving teacher quality and maximizing principal effectiveness. Incentives for teachers will include differentiated compensation levels based on classroom and school-level value-added student achievement gains along with classroom instructional performance. For principals, incentives are based on school level value-added student achievement gains along with the effectiveness of implementation. Participating schools must have a 75% poverty rate or higher. In the initial year of implementation for each of the ten (10) schools, 75% of the teacher-targeted bonus was linked to student achievement on state assessments and 25% was linked to multiple evaluations of teacher performance related instructional design and planning, instructional implementation, and the learning environment and responsibilities. As the program continues and capacity is strengthened, performance awards will be weighted increasingly on individual classroom achievement and classroom observations. CPS will allot $4,000 per teacher in the award pool teachers and $5,000 for principals. Participating schools had to have 75% staff approval for program participation.

Changed Meeting Date

Hello All.

We originally had our next meeting of the Alternative Pay Task Force scheduled for February 2, 2009 at 4:30PM. I had intended on sending out a reminder sooner, but somehow January disappeared for me as I am sure it did you. Because there is not a lot of information posted yet on the blog, I am wondering if everyone needs a little more time (I know I could use a bit more time). I am suggesting that we move the meeting to February 16, 2009 to accommodate this. Please let me know if this new date creates a problem for you.

At our last meeting, we discussed each of us reviewing a current school district performance pay plan, writing up a short (100 words or less) summary of the plan, evaluating the plan based upon the design parameters we discussed in December, and posting the write-up to the blog. Jennifer and Lauren have wonderful examples below.

For February 16, I would like have each of us summarize the plan assigned (see the list below), and discuss components that aligned with our design elements: (1) Ongoing, job-embedded professional development; (2) Performance-based compensation; (3) Evaluation based on professional standards; and (4) Career advancement options.

Thank you all for your work on this, and your flexibility.

Paul


Existing Performance Pay Plans

Alan Abromovitz
Alaska Teacher and Principal Incentive Program

Lauren Conklin
Mission Possible (Guilford County Schools, North Carolina)

Jennifer Corum
Effective Practice Incentive Fund (EPIF) (Memphis City Schools, Tennessee)
The New 3R's: Rigor, Results and Rewards (Mare Island Technical Academy, California)

Mark Frost
Recognizing Excellence in Academic Leadership (REAL) (Chicago Public Schools)

Gary Gee
Northern New Mexico Performance-Based Compensation Program

Kyle Howe
South Carolina Teacher Incentive Fund
Ladue School District, Missouri

Mike Hoffman
Dallas Independent School District (Texas)
Texas Governor's Educator Excellence Grant

Paul Kelly
Philadelphia Teacher and Principal Incentive Fund Project (Pennsylvania)

Becky Kiefer
Weld County School District (Colorado)

Jeff Klein
Strategies for Motivating and Rewarding Teachers (Project SMART) (Houston Independent School District, Texas)

Debbie Knudsen
Effective Practice Incentive Fund (Washington, D.C. Public Schools)

Scott Marsh
Denver's Professional Compensation System for Teachers (ProComp)
The Ohio Teacher Incentive Fund

Linda Wiederholt
Florida's Merit Award Program (MAP)

Unassigned
Eagle County School District Performance-Based Compensation Program (Colorado)

Guilford County Schools: Mission Possible

Guilford County Schools (Guilford County, North Carolina):

Mission Possible is a five year plan designed to to retain and recruit a highly qualified staff who work together to increase student achievement. It began in November 2006 when only one of the schools made AYP in 2004-2005. To measure the schools participating in the program, Mission Possible will use value-added data to measure student achievement.

Prior to Mission Possible, Guilford County schools implemented funding for 20 schools to differentiate the salaries of technical teachers, beginning teachers, and special education teachers. In addition, North Carolina awards principals and teachers a $750 bonus if students show one year's growth and $1500 if they achieve higher than that. This, along with the Teacher Incentive Fund grant for more than $1.5 million will allow the participating schools money for teacher and administrative incentives.

Does this plan meet the design elements from our last meeting?

Design #1: Ongoing, Job-Embedded Professional Development--yes
Design #2: Performance-Based Compensation--yes and no(YES, through value-added data, AYP, and state ABC standards; NO, not all teachers are eligible for these incentives.)
Design Element #3: Evaluation Based on Professional Standards--yes (360 degree feedback and skill-based training, SERVE Center in NC will conduct the evaluation, providing both formative and summative evaluations.)
Design Element #4: Career Advancement Options--unsure (Program states that it will support "significant professional development opportunities".)