A year later, teacher pay reform is still a distant dream
Thursday, May 1, 2008Written by: Uncle Charley
It’s a landmark day. One year ago today this site launched, and one year ago today I wrote my first post for what was then known as the HeadFirst blog about a new report “depolarizing the teacher pay debate.”
I specifically cited a quote from the report made by a team of award-winning teachers: “Like the dusty blackboards still found in some school classrooms, the single-salary schedule has served its purposes and outlived its usefulness.”
In the meantime, the Governor’s P-20 council convened and voted on a recommendation to reform teacher pay systems. I harshly noted back in November:
The recommendation for “alternative compensation systems” says that “sustained adequate funding” is needed before any changes can be made. The Tough Choices call to redirect the excess of bloated teacher pension funds into new teacher recruitment and performance incentives, requiring almost no new investment in the system: what happened to that? Contract schools, weighted student funding, a complete shift in emphasis from seat time to exit exams - all by the wayside.
Saying that some vague notion of “sustained adequate funding” must be achieved before undergoing serious teacher pay reform means the idea might as well be dropped for good. And ironically, today, the House Appropriations Committee did just that—killing the bipartisan Senate Bill 65, which would have set aside a one-time appropriation of $2 million (a fairly paltry sum in state budget terms) as seed money to help school districts effect compensation reform.
It’s hard to make an argument that frugality was guiding the committee’s decisions. House Bill 1384, which has a larger fiscal note, dedicates funds specifically to teacher rewards that are even less different from the failed traditional single salary schedule.
Even so, Todd Engdahl reports the battle isn’t over yet for alternative compensation that could include real performance pay:
But, just two hours later, the full Senate did an end-run around the committee and inserted the program and its $2 million into House Bill 08-1388, the 2008-09 school finance bill.
How this will play out in a conference committee between the two houses is anybody’s guess. But the defenders of the single salary schedule status quo might fall back on the “sustained adequate funding” argument to drain the life out of a modest version of reform championed in Governor Bill Ritter’s Colorado Promise.
If legislators end up eliminating the funds to jump start teacher pay reform from the school finance bill, it won’t be because there were no other worthy cuts to make or because this $2 million would bankrupt the State Education Fund.
One year later, and we’re still fighting for the smallest scraps of real change in the area of teacher pay.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:38 pm
Readers interested in learning more about the history, issues, and research concerning alternative teacher compensation systems (e.g., Merit Pay) will want to read a policy brief we published last year, written by Dr. Debbi Harris, who is affiliated with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I think you’ll find it readable, balanced and informative. You can find the brief at:
http://epicpolicy.org/publication/the-promises-and-pitfalls-alternative-teacher-compensation-approaches
May 4th, 2008 at 8:08 am
A quick note. At West Denver Prep, we expect to have teachers who work for 2-8 years, but who may not stay in the profession their entire lives (similar to the patterns for 20-30 year olds in virtually every other vocation). So we had a Board task force examine our compensation structure. We moved to a very different compensation plan:
- All teachers start at the same salary, which is DPS Year 3 +20% (roughly $43,122, which equates to a teacher with a B.A. and about 9 years experience). We will make exceptions, such as our Science teacher with a PhD from Columbia, but this is the norm. We have the same high expectations for teachers with 1 year of experience than we do for teachers with 10 years, and we want a meritocracy, so we will begin by paying the same regardless of years of teaching.
- All teachers will receive an annual COLA increase, based on Denver metro CPI. Additional raises are recommended by the Head of School and approved by the Board. We fully expect outstanding teachers to receive significant raises, but only the COLA is guaranteed.
- All teachers are part of a merit bonus plan that awards up to 15% of median teacher salary based on classroom, subject, and school performance on the CSAP and Stanford 10.
In essence, we want to initially pay teachers BETTER than they would receive at a District school, but remove the DCTA salary schedule which rewards seniority over other attributes, and give both raises and bonuses based on performance.
None of this excuses the inaction at the state and district level, but there are some pockets of schools trying different pay reform measures.