LITTLE ROCK — Three Arkansas school districts will use $13.7 million in federal funds to provide bonuses to their teachers, with the size of the annual checks based in part on the teachers’ ability to raise student scores on standardized tests.
The bonuses will augment the districts’ pay scales, which, like most districts, base a teacher’s pay on experience and education levels without consideration for individual performance.
The U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday five-year grants of $5 million for the Augusta School District to create its own experimental performance-pay program and $8.7 million for the California-based National Institute for Excellence in Teaching to administer the bonuses in the Lincoln Consolidated and Cross County school districts.
“This will allow us to go out and say, ‘You think you can produce? Come in here and produce,’” said Augusta Superintendent Arvis Blevins. “‘If you do, you’ll get a lot of money for it.’”
Augusta schools last year began a small performance pay plan, paying $58,000 in teacher bonuses. Teachers got up to $3,500, paid with district funds.
The plan used a formula that awarded points for moving an individual student up a performance category on the state’s Benchmark Exams,which designate students as below basic, basic, proficient and advanced in core subject areas.
The district will have 60 days to design its new, federally funded program, which will lift maximum bonus levels to $10,000 per teacher.
The three Arkansas districts will use the Teacher Advancement Plan, or TAP, model created by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching.
The model bases 50 percent of a teacher’s bonus on classroom evaluations, 30 percent on growth in test scores of students within that teacher’s classroom and 20 percent on schoolwide testing progress.
Test score growth is calculated using a “value-added” model, which measures each student’s scores against previous years to determine their gains.
The Arkansas grants are part of the $1.2 billion Teacher Incentive Fund, which provided awards to 62 sites in 27 states Thursday.
The first two years of the grants - totaling $442 million nationally- are funded, the department’s release said. But the remaining three years are dependent on congressional approval, it said.
The program provides declining levels of grant money over the five-year period, requiring the districts to take on a larger share of funding each year. It’s designed to encourage more districts to design and implement performance pay programs, also known as merit pay.
Supporters of performance pay for teachers argue that it encourages existing teachers to work harder and attracts motivated staff with the promise that their efforts will be recognized.
Opponents of the plans, including most teachers unions, have said student standardized test performance is an unfair way to measure a teacher’s efforts and the bonuses can create tension and discourage cooperation between teaching staff.
Few traditional public schools in Arkansas use merit pay plans, said Julie Johnson Thompson, spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Education.
Cross County and Lincoln are in the final year as the only districts in the three year, state-funded Rewarding Excellence in Achievement Program, which provided a combined $800,000.
Other districts have considered or experimented with merit pay, but the plans were abandoned or never pursued because of a lack of funding.
Some of the state’s charter schools, encouraged to use experimental methods to raise student achievement, have used the differentiated pay plans.
Little Rock’s three eStem charter schools issued checks totaling nearly half a million dollars in July for gains students made during the 2009-2010 school year. All employees, even those who didn’t teach in classrooms, received the awards.
Teachers were eligible for bonuses up to $10,000. Support staff, including secretaries and custodians, were eligible for up to $1,000.
The rewards were calculated using a combination of growth in student standardized test scores, computerized assessments made by Northwest Evaluation Association, an outside organization, and supervisor evaluations.
The bonuses were funded with grants from the Walton Family Foundation of Bentonville, the Hussman Foundation of Little Rock and the Brown Foundation of Houston. Hussman Foundation trustee Walter E. Hussman Jr. is the publisher of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
In 2007, the Rogers School District rejected $2 million from the Walton Family Foundation to start a merit-pay program after failed attempts at securing federal funding and opposition from a local teacher’s union.
Under the plan, teachers at 10 Rogers schools would have been eligible for bonuses of up to $4,000 annually.
Federal reviewers criticized the plan for placing too much emphasis on standardized test scores, which determined 90 percent of a teacher’s bonus.
Thursday’s federal grants announcement came days after a national study concluded performance-pay bonuses had little effect on the performance of nearly 300 middle school math teachers in Nashville, Tenn.
The three-year experiment by the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University tracked test scores after fifth- through eighth-grade math teachers were offered bonuses of $5,000, $10,000 and $15,000 for hitting targets in annual test score gains. Half of participating teachers were assigned to a control group ineligible for the bonuses.
On the whole, researchers found no significant difference between the results from classes led by teachers who received bonuses and those led by teachers who did not.
The study’s authors also concluded the pay plan “did not set off significant negative reactions of the kind that have attended the introduction of merit pay elsewhere.” Surveyed teachers concluded the goals were within reach and did not damage the schools’ culture.
Peter Cunningham, assistant U.S. education secretary for communications and outreach, told The Washington Post that the Vanderbilt study was not an accurate measure of merit pay effectiveness because it did not include professional development and mentoring, a key part of most plans. Merit pay is one of President Barack Obama’s educational initiatives.
The TAP program, the model for the three Arkansas districts, offers higher potential bonuses to mentoring “master teachers,” who help their peers draft curriculum plans and complete classroom evaluations, said Gary Stark, president of the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching.
The institute’s plans for the Cross County and Lincoln districts, which will go into effect in the 2011-2012 school year, include average awards of about $4,000 per teacher.
The grants will taper off, with the districts assuming 75 percent of the costs of the bonuses by the fifth year, Stark said. The schools may rely on district funding or private grants to continue TAP bonuses after the federal grants run out, he said.
“We have a great many schools and districts that fund TAP utilizing their existing budgets,” Stark said. “The grant is a great time to learn and see how to fund this thing.”
The institute typically requires schools to have “buy in” from staff, requiring 75 percent of teachers to vote for a pay plan’s approval before it can be implemented.
“It really is a culture change,” Stark said.
The Lincoln Consolidated School District has had some form of performance-pay plan for eight years, Superintendent Frank Holman said.
Teachers largely support the district’s current plan, which offers bonuses of up to 17 percent of a teacher’s salary based on testing performance and evaluations.
Teachers with a bachelor’s degree and no experience earn $33,500 in Lincoln’s public schools.
The district hopes to find a long-term way to fund the bonuses after the newest federal grant expires, Holman said.
“We want to sustain it in the future,” he said. “That’s what we’re working toward.”
Seventh-grade math teacher Jana Claybrook uses her bonus checks, which typically arrive in late fall, to plan a vacation or shopping trip.
“I work really hard, and I feel good when somebody notices that I work hard and I’m compensated for that hard work,” said the teacher, now in her 23rd year with Lincoln schools. “I haven’t changed one thing about the way that I teach. I teach the same.”
There’s been little teacher turnover since the district implemented merit pay plans, she said. A few teachers who were uncomfortable with the pay structure left the district, Claybrook said.
Cross County Superintendent Matt McClure said two years of testing data do not provide adequate proof that performance pay has influenced student achievement, but the federal grant may help support and enforce good teaching practices encouraged by the district’s existing state funded program.
As in Lincoln, bonuses in Cross County top out at 17 percent of teacher salaries. The largest award last year was $7,700, with average bonuses reaching $3,900.
“We have experienced gains in achievement almost across the board since we implemented pay for performance,” McClure said. “But we’ve got lots of other initiatives going in the district. I don’t know that I could point a finger at it and say pay for performance is responsible for this, but it has certainly helped.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 09/24/2010