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Section: Front page Section: Local & State Section: Page 1 Current stories in Front page: |
June 7, 2005, 10:43PM Teachers could get $3,000 if schools improveSaavedra devises plan to lure staff to 3 failing campusesBy JASON SPENCERCopyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
Getting rid of the ineffective teachers at three of HISD's worst high schools, it turns out, was the easy part. Replacing them with educators good enough to bring Sam Houston, Yates and Kashmere high schools back up to acceptable levels, Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra has decided, will take a promise of cold cash. On Thursday, he will ask the Houston Independent School District Board of Trustees to approve his plan to give teachers at those schools yearly bonuses of up to $3,000 if their students do better on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. Teachers could earn bonuses based on campuswide improvements and gains posted in their individual classrooms. "We need to do whatever it takes to get the best teachers into those schools to start working," Saavedra said in a written statement. The leader of Houston's largest teachers union called the proposal a desperation move by administrators who didn't realize how difficult replacing the teachers would be. A total of 113 teachers — nearly 40 percent of the teaching staff — at the three schools have been told to look for work elsewhere for next fall, including 61 at Sam Houston, 34 at Yates and 18 at Kashmere, according to HISD. The staffing changes are part of the school district's plan to get the schools off the state's "academically unacceptable" list next year. "They backed themselves into a corner on staffing and they don't know how to fix it," said Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. She said she doubts Saavedra's offer will lure many good teachers out of their current jobs and into the struggling schools. "I will bet the superintendent lunch, at the restaurant of his choice, that he opens the year with primarily first-year teachers or vacant positions."
Teachers who get resultsSaavedra's plan, a three-year pilot program, could cost nearly $800,000 a year if every teacher at the three schools earns the maximum payout. Saavedra plans to pay for it with federal money set aside for recruiting and retaining teachers. The average starting salary for an HISD teacher is $36,000, the lowest among 10 Harris County school districts, according to the teachers union.The proposal is the latest in a series of moves by Saavedra to spend more money on teachers who get results. The school district has recruited 104 teachers to spend the next month working with 915 high school seniors who still haven't passed the TAKS. The teachers are earning their regular hourly rate, which is more than the typical summer school teaching pay rate, and stand to earn $100 for every student they help pass the exam. Saavedra is also asking the school board to let him toughen the 10-year-old incentive pay system that awards extra pay to every employee of schools that meet annual achievement goals. Under last year's easier standards, 80 percent of schools qualified for the bonuses that paid most teachers $440. Those bonuses could reach more than $1,000 per teacher under Saavedra's plan. School board President Dianne Johnson said she supports Saavedra's latest bonus proposal. "When we have numbers like 82 percent of ninth-graders failing math, we know business as usual is not the answer," Johnson said, referring to Yates' TAKS scores. Bill Miller, president of the Yates Parent-Teacher-Student Association, said he's skeptical of the plan. "I have a real problem with HISD and Texas tying everything to the test," he said. "The tests are high stakes and it's just inviting a lot of undesirable conduct." Saavedra chose to emphasize TAKS scores because that's how the state's school rating system works, said HISD spokesman Terry Abbott. "The schools were rated as academically unacceptable by the state of Texas," Abbott wrote in an e-mail. "Therefore, a response by the district must speak directly to that issue. But what we're trying to achieve here is better teaching and learning." The pilot program at the three high schools would put HISD in the forefront of an emerging trend of school districts offering teachers substantial bonuses, said Edward Fuller, a University of Texas researcher who specializes in teacher recruitment and retention issues. "It's very aggressive and very cutting edge," Fuller said. School leaders in Chattanooga, Tenn., decided in 2000 to require all the teachers at nine struggling elementary schools to reapply for their jobs, the same as HISD did this year with Yates, Sam Houston and Kashmere. Chattanooga created a performance bonus program that pays teachers up to $7,000 a year for test score gains and also offered them $10,000 for down payments on new homes. The local bar association offered the teachers free legal services for almost anything. "Anything except suing the school system," joked Ray Swoffard, an assistant superintendent who oversees Chattanooga's elementary schools. While the program didn't lure many expert teachers into those schools, it has helped them retain the good ones, Swoffard said. "We've grown a lot of those teachers," he said. "In the past you would see teachers transfer out to suburban schools." Denver voters will decide in November whether to spend more tax dollars on a teacher incentive plan that pays an extra $1,000 to any teacher who signs on to work in that city's lowest-performing schools. Teachers there could also earn extra pay for meeting yearly goals, taking extra training and receiving positive annual evaluations.
Words of cautionOfficials in Denver explored basing bonuses more directly on standardized test scores, but abandoned that idea when they realized it was too difficult to draw a direct relation between higher test scores and any individual teacher's performance, said Jeff Buck, a union member serving on Denver's Joint Task Force on Teacher Compensation."You need to be real careful when you're looking at large-scale assessment data and you're making pay decisions based on that," Buck said. Fuller, the UT researcher, said he applauds HISD's effort, but suggests offering some front-end money to get teachers into the schools. "If I was king, I would guarantee them some money, especially the first couple of years, just as an enticement to get people in," Fuller said. "If teachers don't see it as fair, then teachers aren't going to buy into the system and that will bring it down eventually." Fallon said she could support such a proposal, but some HISD trustees aren't so sure. "We don't want to give out incentives just for showing up for work every day if there is no increase in performance," said trustee Diana Dávila, a former teacher. jason.spencer@chron.com
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