A Step Forward for Teacher Performance Pay

A hopeful thing happened yesterday in New York City. Union leaders and elected officials came to an agreement on a performance pay plan for teachers based primarily on the test scores of students at schools with large populations of low-income students. Here's what The New York Times has to say on the new plan:

Merit pay programs, which base compensation for teachers on their classroom performance rather than their seniority and academic degrees, have traditionally been opposed by teachers' unions. But those programs, as well as other incentive pay plans, have been gaining ground across the country in recent years, and the movement is likely to get a major boost with this agreement in the nation's largest school system.

New York City's plan, which is contingent on the State Legislature's expected acceptance of the pension agreement, is a twist on the traditional concept of merit pay. Pots of money would not be distributed teacher-by-teacher but are to be given to schools that have school-wide gains in student test scores. It will be up to "compensation committees" at each school, made up of two teachers, the principal and a principal's appointee, to distribute the money. They could choose to distribute it evenly among union members or single out exceptional teachers. They cannot distribute the money by seniority.


Now, I'm pleased to see the city and the teachers' union working together. It's a step in the right direction. However, a decision of how these incentives will be distributed at the schools is still an open question. Bonus pay for individual teachers should be one of the options for the local school committees to consider.


There are several models already at work out there that show a district can combine school-wide and individual incentives for performance. I hope that the compensation committees will take a look at some of them, such as the TAP Program, which recognizes high performing schools while leaving the door open to also reward individual teachers who foster high achievement in their classrooms.


Brad Jupp and a few others who worked to develop the Pro-Comp performance pay plan in Denver offer some interesting perspectives on this debate. Jupp recently co-authored a book on Denver plan, and here's what they have to say on the issue of individual vs. school wide incentives:

"It is cynical to suggest that teachers cannot be judged on the results they produce in classrooms on their own. If they cannot be, why would we not just throw a bunch of high school graduates into classrooms and expect them to produce similar results? [...] Why not treat [teachers] as the professionals they are and pay them for the results they produce, especially because we learned that compensation geared toward individual achievement does not sabotage collegiality?"


What it comes down to is that measuring teacher performance is not simple, and it is too early to consider this conversation closed. As for New York City, I applaud their collaboration and for their willingness to address the fact that we need to reform teacher compensation to attract the best and the brightest to our schools. Let's hope that the education plans from our presidential candidates follow the same lead.


For more on how we at ED in '08 would like to see performance pay work, take a look here.