One of the things that outsiders bring to bureaucracies is a willingness to experiment and to rethink established ways of doing business. Earlier this month, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg did precisely that when he and the leaders of the NYC United Federation of Teachers (UFT) unveiled a new performance-based bonus system for teachers working at that city’s most challenging schools. The roadmap they have constructed should be carefully examined by educators throughout San Diego county.
Under the program, incentive bonuses can be won by the faculty at any of NYC’s 200 “highest-need schools” if students show significant measurable academic progress. Those schools that meet the performance standards and objectives set forth at the beginning of the year will receive enough money to give $3,000 to each full time faculty member. The premise is straightforward – compensate great teachers who succeed in helping students facing the greatest challenges.
Showing that politics is the art of the possible, there are compromises in this plan. Individual schools, for example, need to opt-in to the program through a vote of the faculty. The district still needs to precisely determine how it will measure performance. Perhaps most concerning, the bonuses do not flow directly to individual teachers. Instead, at each site that qualifies for the bonus, a four-person compensation committee (comprised of two administrators and two faculty members) will determine how to distribute the funds. It will be critical that these committees develop distribution methodologies that reward individuals for their achievements. While student achievement is greatly impacted by the teaching efforts of a site’s faculty, to avoid free-rider problems and so as to recognize individual efforts, it is critical to put the greatest emphasis on rewarding individual teachers.
Implementing a similar program in San Diego, especially at the San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD), could have tremendous benefits. Besides rewarding faculty members that succeed in raising student achievement levels, such a program would also address one of SDUSD’s most pernicious problems. Under the terms of the current contract, there is no difference in the compensation received by a teacher who teaches at a high-needs school and one who teaches at a school in an affluent neighborhood. In addition, San Diego Unified places great weight on seniority when determining who has priority for transferring to open teaching slots. In combination, these two policies result in a disproportionate concentration of new and less experienced teachers at the district’s most challenging schools. The losers in this arrangement are the kids in the district who need the most help.
Bloomberg’s plan creatively resolves this problem. Because only highest-need schools are eligible to participate in the bonus program, the incentives facing teachers are altered. As they gain in seniority, NYC teachers now will have to weigh the benefits of transferring to more affluent schools against the opportunity cost of leaving a school that is eligible for the bonuses. As Bloomberg stated, the program “creates an incentive for great teachers to teach in City schools that serve high need students.” Moreover, it does not directly challenge the existing collective bargaining agreement, which has provisions similar to SDUSD. Rather than engaging in direct confrontation to change the contract, Bloomberg’s plan augments it, a major reason why the program won the support of the UFT.
It is inevitable that skeptics will soon make themselves heard. Though Bloomberg’s plan greatly improves upon early merit-based policies such as Denver Unified’s ProComp program, $3,000 may still not be enough of a reward to impact outcomes. Others will find a different fault – arguing that teachers do not enter the profession for money and, as a result, monetary merit rewards won’t make any difference. Critics also are likely to argue that that a performance-based incentive program will end up being little more than a lottery, determined by external circumstances which impact student performance but over which teachers have no control.
Such criticisms ignore the fact that almost every other service profession has shown how incentives and bonuses lead to better performance. As Mayor Bloomberg rightly points out, why shouldn’t incentives and bonuses lead to better performance in education when they work in other “service” professions like the law, higher education and healthcare?
Teaching in 21st century America is a daunting and difficult endeavor. The pressure to perform has never been greater and the demands on teachers, administrators and students are increasing. The plan unveiled in NYC earlier this month aligns incentives and merit-based rewards with the taxpayer demands that faculty members perform. Proponents of innovation should urge San Diego’s education leaders to move immediately to implement similar bonus programs in school districts throughout the county.
Reader Feedback
Casey and Martin Fenton Says:
An idea that is both timely and necessary.
But the "devil is in the details" as often a great idea is suborned totally once it passes through the bureaucracy and becomes translated into regulations and process. A recent example is the "no child left behind" initiative about which critics feel that, in practice, the thrust of that intitative is blunted and subverted.
However, because the program is local, it may be possible to define and to implement a workable incentive program.
Our children would be the winners.
November 1, 2007 at 10:39 AM
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An idea that is both timely and necessary.
But the "devil is in the details" as often a great idea is suborned totally once it passes through the bureaucracy and becomes translated into regulations and process. A recent example is the "no child left behind" initiative about which critics feel that, in practice, the thrust of that intitative is blunted and subverted.
However, because the program is local, it may be possible to define and to implement a workable incentive program.
Our children would be the winners.