Extensive research has shown that a school's ability to attract quality teachers is the most important ingredient in determining its ability to educate its students. But although American public schools spend more than $100 billion annually on teacher salaries, current pay systems fail to ensure all students, particularly minority and disadvantaged children, are taught by qualified teachers. The problem is that most public school teachers are compensated without regard to their students' achievements, using a single-salary pay schedule based on experience and advanced education credits.
Innovations to tie teacher pay more closely to student achievement and market realities can help both address teacher shortages and improve achievement. To realize the goals of education reform, we must not only pay teachers more, but must also pay them more creatively.
State and local leaders are beginning to show a greater willingness to pay creatively, experimenting with knowledge and skills-based, performance measurements, and differential pay for teachers. Knowledge and skills-based pay rewards teachers for achieving and demonstrating specific skills that demonstrate student achievement. Performance-based pay rewards teachers for increasing student achievement. Differential pay reflects market realities by rewarding teachers who fill greater needs, such as teaching in high-poverty areas or providing skills in shortage areas like math, science, and special education.
Modern pay plans created in North Carolina; Texas; Florida; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Pennsylvania; Colorado's Denver and Douglas Counties; and many public charter schools offer excellent ideas for state and local leaders looking to improve teacher quality. The plans reflect the diversity of the communities and states that have adopted the innovations and underscore the importance of carefully considering local needs and circumstances when designing and implementing teacher pay innovations.
The Denver model is the nation's first urban school district pay-for-performance plan. In 2005, voters passed a $25 million tax increase to fund a new, nine-year performance-based pay system for the city's teachers. The Professional Compensation System for Teachers (ProComp) is an agreement between the Denver Board of Education and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association (DCTA) to link teacher pay more closely to performance and market conditions.
Unlike traditional teacher pay schemes, in which salary is determined by years in the classroom and earned higher education credits, ProComp will link teacher raises or bonuses to professional evaluations, student academic growth, placement in hard-to-staff schools or subject areas, and knowledge and skill levels. Teachers who perform well on these measures will be able to earn more money over the course of their careers than under traditional pay plans.
The ProComp initiative began in 1999 during collective bargaining when the city's school board proposed a pay-for-performance experiment and the local teachers union agreed. From that agreement, 16 Denver schools become part of a four-year experiment to see how performance-based pay would work and determine what a larger performance-based pay plan for Denver teachers should look like. In 2004, both the school board and the union voted to create a district-wide ProComp plan as part of the Denver teachers' contract, and the November 2005 tax increase provided the funding necessary to implement the plan. As of May 2007, nearly half of the teachers in the Denver area were paid using the ProComp plan.
Elsewhere in Colorado, the Eagle County school system began to pilot the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP). TAP, founded in 1999 by the Milken Family Foundation, provides a comprehensive approach to the promotion of quality teaching. The program joins both knowledge-and-skills and performance-based compensation. Eagle County is the only Colorado school district to eliminate the single salary schedule completely. The best available research demonstrates that TAP teachers and TAP schools outperform their counterparts in most measurements of student learning gains, especially in the area of reading.
In Arkansas, Gov. Mike Beebe passed and signed into law the Rewarding Excellence in Achievement Program (REAP) Act last year, a 2 year pilot program which allows up to 12 public schools districts, individual public schools, or public charter schools to annually receive a portion of $2.5 million set aside for alternative teacher compensation. The REAP Program also ensures that the teachers themselves have a say in the plan. Schools may only submit an application to the state board of education if 70 percent of their teachers, or a percentage agreed upon by both the local school board and a majority of teachers, agrees to do so.
Once a school or district is approved to receive REAP funding they must follow certain criteria in distributing the funds to their teachers. 40 to 60 percent of the funds received for alternative compensation shall be awarded to teachers on the basis of their "input factors," such as teaching experience and level of degrees. The other 40 to 60 percent will be awarded on the "output factors," such as student performance as measured by standardized state testing, as well as teacher evaluations submitted by school principals.
In Texas, the Texas Educator Excellence Grant Program, created in 2006, distributes rewards to the state's most disadvantaged schools that demonstrate the greatest performance in math and reading. Local control is preserved within the guideline that 75 percent of funds must be distributed as teacher bonuses.
In Florida, grants are distributed to school districts for the purpose of developing performance-based pay. In 2002, the state enacted a law requiring districts to implement merit pay, and the legislature appropriated funds for that program in the 2006-07 school year. The Special Teachers Are Rewarded (STAR) Program made $147.5 million available to districts that had proposals approved by the State Board of Education. In March 2007, Florida modified its performance pay policy by adopting the Merit Award Program (MAP). MAP preserves the state's grant program but frees districts from the technical requirement to develop merit pay. MAP makes measured student performance at least 60 percent of the determination for teacher awards. As much as 40 percent can be based on "professional practices," a principal-assessed evaluation of professional competency. Under MAP, the 25 percent cap on the number of teachers eligible to earn rewards was eliminated.
Modernizing teacher pay is just one step state and local leaders can take to ensure all children have skilled, caring teachers. Ultimately, the goal should be to make teaching just like other professions, with an opportunity for a truly professional career path and exceptional pay for demonstrated excellence.
Denver Pay-for-Performance Program
http://denverpfp.org
Douglas County Public Schools
http://www.i2i.org/articles/IP_5_2007.pdf
Jupp, Brad, "Teachers Unions as Agents of Reform," Interview with Sara Mead,
Education Sector
www.educationsector.org/analysis/analysis_show.htm?doc_id=367110
"Idea of the Week: A Teacher Career Ladder Based on Merit,"
DLC, May 22, 2000
www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=393&kaid=110&subid=135
"Idea of the Week: Paying Teachers for Performance," DLC, December 13, 1999
www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=500&kaid=110&subid=135
Andrew Rotherham, "Don't Worry, Performance Pay Is Coming," Chicago Tribune, July 11, 2000
www.dlc.org/ndol_ci.cfm?contentid=1370&kaid=110&subid=135
Bryan C. Hassel, "Better Pay for Better Teaching: Making Teacher Compensation Pay Off in the Age of Accountability,"
PPI, May 29, 2002
http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?
knlgAreaID=110&subsecID=135&contentID=250543
Dr. Bryan Hassel
President, Public Impact
504 Dogwood Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27516
(919) 967-5102
(919) 928-8473 (fax)
bryan_hassel@publicimpact.com
Allan Odden
Professor of Educational Administration
University of Wisconsin-Madison
653 Educational Sciences
1025 West Johnson Street
Madison, WI 53706-1798
(608) 263-4260
arodden@facstaff.wisc.edu
Brad Jupp
Pay for Performance Design Team
DPS/DCTA
Denver Public Schools
900 Grant Street
Denver, CO 80203
(720) 423-3629
(720) 423-3413
brad_jupp@dpsk12.org
Kate Walsh
National Council on Teacher Quality
4001341 G Street NW
Suite 720
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 393-0020
(202) 478-0838 (fax)
http://www.nctq.org
kwalsh@nctq.org
Andrew J. Rotherham
Co-Founder and Co-Director
Education Sector
1201 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Suite 850
Washington, DC 20036
(434) 973-2173
arotherham@educationsector.org
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