Performance Pay: new ideas from teachers

A new take on performance-based compensation for teachers from TeacherSolutions, a unique panel of excellent teachers from across the country who meet (both in-person and virtually) to think through education issues from a teacher’s perspective.

What’s in the report?

Teachers will support performance-pay plans that advance student achievement and the teaching profession, says a first-of-its-kind report written by a diverse group of expert teachers from across the United States. The new TeacherSolutionsSM study proposes radical changes in the way teachers have traditionally been compensated, including:

• Rewarding small teams of teachers who raise student achievement together;
• Rewarding teachers who accept challenging assignments in high-needs schools and strengthen connections between school and community; and
• Redesigning pay systems so that teacher success, not seniority or graduate degrees, determines maximum teacher pay.

The value of the report is not only in its recommendations, but in who they come from and how they were developed:

“What’s unique about this report is that it’s the first time that classroom teachers—not policy wonks or politicians, but great teachers—have weighed in on this policy issue in a nationally publicized report,” said Barnett Berry, founder and president of the Center for Teaching Quality. “If we want pay plans to gain acceptance on the ground, the voices of accomplished teachers must be heard.”

Links to the report, the executive summary, and news analysis of the report can be found at the Teacher Leaders Network website.

TLN and TeacherSolutions are projects of the Center for Teaching Quality, a national research-based advocacy organization focusing on teacher quality and teacher leadership.

Here at TEN, we’re excited to a see such a strong model for teacher-led conversation on serious educational issues--the kinds of conversations we hope to be having on TEN!

Labels: Resources

Posted by jimpud2 on April 24, 2007 1:08 PM

I spent several years working under a “merit pay” bonus system in a suburban Chicago school system. It was nothing but a way for the principals to reward their cronies, keep male teachers in the system and punish people who rocked the boat. Even though I received several of the bonuses, it soured me on merit pay as a way to reward excellent teaching.

The executive study of the report cited above makes it clear that the participants went into the study already supporting differential pay systems. This bias may simpy be the opposite of my bias. Bias is never a good basis for sound decision making.

I would support something like the Rochester plan that paid teachers more for doing more work (as team leaders, for curriculum design, etc.).