Rogers : Teachers give final ideas for merit pay
Posted on Wednesday, January 31, 2007
ROGERS — A teacher-led committee submitted final recommendations Tuesday related to the district’s meritpay proposal.
The guidelines include offering additional money to teachers of high-need subject areas, offering extra rewards to instructors in high-poverty schools and forming an advisory committee to handle program supervision.
Rogers School District administrators now are charged with sculpting the committee’s recommendations into a grant application. The proposal is due in the U. S. Department of Education’s office by Feb. 12.
School Board President Joye Kelley, who sat in on the committee’s three-hour discussion Tuesday night, liked what she heard.
“I’m encouraged,” Kelley said. “I think it’s a great day when our staff will devote their time like this to our programs, and specifically to incentive pay.”
Rogers is applying for about $ 3 million in federal money to support a merit-pay program. About $ 43 million is available this year through the U. S. department’s Teacher Incentive Fund.
The Walton Family Foundation has committed $ 2 million if Rogers receives the federal money.
The five-year program will first pay about 350 teachers in 10 of the district’s 21 schools starting in 2008. At least 85 percent of the teachers in those schools voted to participate in the program in November.
The committee settled on three classes of employees who would be eligible for rewards. Essentially, an employee must work directly with students to fit into one of the classes.
Maximum bonuses fluctuate depending on which class the employee belongs to. Teachers of core subject areas like math and reading can earn up to $ 4, 000 annually, while paraprofessionals like classroom aides max out at $ 1, 500 per year.
The committee also decided Tuesday to award additional money to teachers who work in high-poverty schools and who teach in high-need subject areas. The move will increase the district’s chances of receiving the grant, officials said.
The structure allows a teacher who fits both criteria to earn 20 percent more in bonus money annually. For a core teacher, that would equal an extra $ 800 each year.
Officials will distribute 90 percent of the bonuses based on student growth on standardized tests. Classroom evaluations by supervisors will cover the remaining 10 percent.
For most teachers, student growth will be calculated from schoolwide averages on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the Arkansas Benchmark Exams. Individual classroom performance will be a factor only for core teachers.
Emphasizing schoolwide gains should promote collaboration and fight division among teachers, said Deputy Superintendent Mark Sparks.
“So there shouldn’t be a great disparity inside buildings when the payouts occur,” Sparks said. “You aren’t going to see somebody get $ 5 and someone else get $ 2, 200.”
The amount of growth needed to qualify for the maximum reward will fluctuate from year to year. Administrators will adjust the bar annually based on schools’ performances the prior year. This will safeguard the district against cost overruns.
“Because the worst thing in the world would be promising to pay teachers $ 4, 000 and then not paying them $ 4, 000,” said Gary Ritter, a professor with the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s department of education reform.
Ritter is helping design the program and will evaluate it on an annual basis. Ritter said Tuesday that between $ 250, 000 and $ 300, 000 of the grant money would go toward evaluation. Federal officials demand an annual evaluation component.
Education Association of Rogers officials have fought the merit-pay proposal since the idea first surfaced in November. Officials recently complained the School Board violated state law when it voted to apply for the federal grant. The association claims the issue had to go through the district’s Personnel Policy Committee first. Lynn Valenteen-Marzoni, the association president, said in a telephone interview that the association is seeking an attorney general’s opinion on the matter.
To contact this reporter: jkrupa@arkansasonline. com
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