Schools for Tomorrow Blog

Having read yesterday’s report in the Rocky Mountain News, it seems to me that Denver’s ProComp is nearing an important crossroads: Will the teacher compensation system collapse of its own weight, or will it evolve into something even better?

According to the Rocky:

Nearly three years after Denver voters approved a $25 million tax hike to fund a revolutionary pay plan for teachers, less than a third of that money is finding its way into teacher paychecks.

But a dispute over how to fix the plan, called ProComp, is among the reasons that contract talks between Denver Public Schools and its teachers union have stalled.

On Monday, the Denver Classroom Teachers Association petitioned the Colorado Department of Labor to take over negotiations between the union and district after grinding to a halt last week.

The financial stability of a fixed funding source often is touted as a key component of successful teacher compensation reform. Well, it appears financial instability is not a problem for the ProComp Trust Fund. The inability to spend money fast enough is magnifying tensions at the negotiating table.

DCTA wants to deliver on more money to teachers across the board, but the funds simply are not doled out in a quota amount. ProComp rewards are distributed for meeting objective criteria, and the money isn’t available to those veteran teachers who have chosen not to sign up.

[Superintendent Michael] Bennet contends that the low participation rates, leading to the unspent ProComp dollars, are due to the small annual increases and incentives that teachers receive under the system.

This is a potentially vicious circle. While the Denver pay system certainly was groundbreaking, it also was crafted conservatively to win the needed support from different stakeholders—primarily, from DCTA. Modest rewards apparently lessen the interest from some teachers. After the initial rush of teachers who signed up for ProComp (and the automatic entry of all teachers hired 2006 and afterward), signs of new interest from teachers have waned.

Enter a breath of fresh air:

DPS wants to use more of the money up front, getting more money to teachers earlier in their careers.

“That’s critical if what we’re wanting to do is to attract and retain teachers, which is our single objective when it comes to compensation,” Bennet said.

DPS also would triple incentives under ProComp so that, for example, a teacher working in a high-poverty school would receive a $3,000 bonus instead of $1,000.

But Kim Ursetta, with the union, said DPS is talking about “averages” and not all teachers.

“If it were truly $9,000 for all, we would have signed a month ago,” she said.

So that brings us to the crossroads. Will the union prevail and water down performance pay so that everyone gets the same amount (thus destroying the incentive)? Or will the district get the flexibility to craft incentives that allow high-quality teachers with needed skills and/or experience to be recruited and retained? I think the latter is more in line with the spirit of what Denver taxpayers approved back in 2005.

What will the outcome be: “ProComp: The Next Generation” or “The Union Empire Strikes Back”?

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 11:21 am and is filed under Teacher pay, Teacher unions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.