Teacher Compensation
Project Overview
The purpose of this project is to identify alternative salary approaches that provide strong incentives for enhancing the individual teaching capacity to teach students to high academic standards, and that reward groups of teachers for success. Specifically, the Project is looking at how alternative pay systems might be used to better focus teacher development and classroom practice, as well as the role of compensation in organizational development. Ultimately, the Project hopes to build on the strengths of existing compensation systems in education and other sectors to make compensation an important element in support of educational reform and teaching excellence.
Project History
The CPRE Teacher Compensation Project grew out of the development of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), and interest in rewarding teachers for their participation in the National Board Certification Process. At a meeting in 1992, Jim Kelly, President of the NBPTS, was presenting information on the Board. Several individuals in the room wanted to know why the Board was proposing to pay teachers more for "process" or "inputs" and not more for results or outcomes. Albert Shanker, then President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), rose and said that what the Board was proposing was something different from current pay systems, namely "pay for knowledge" or "pay for skills," a phrase which few people in the room understood.
In January, 1993, Allan Odden, a professor of education and Director of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education's Finance Center, organized a meeting at the University of Southern California for key leaders of the AFT, the National Education Association (NEA), and the National Board. Ed Lawler and Susan Mohrman at the USC Center for Effective Organizations made a series of presentations on high performance organizations, and changes in compensation that were accompanying those new approaches to organization and management, namely skill and competency pay, pay for knowledge, and group-based performance awards. The group thought there were significant possibilities for application to education.
Subsequently, Odden wrote a proposal to the Pew Charitable Trusts for a two-year project to engage the AFT, the NEA and the National Board, as well as over time to involve the other leading education and education policy organizations, in a series of discussion seminars on new forms of compensation and their applicability to education. The former group, the "Teacher Leader Group," met seven times during 1994 and 1995, covering many issues, from the standards-based education reform strategies and their organizational and compensation implications, to various details related to competency pay and group-based performance awards. Its goal was to explore the issues and their applicability to education. There were widely varying responses to the ideas. Some participants thought they provided new avenues that would be good for teachers, teacher compensation and even school performance, and others thought just the opposite.
Carolyn Kelley, Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, joined the project in 1994 and participated in the Teacher Leader Group discussions. Together, Odden, Kelley, and the Teacher Leader Group began to develop a conceptual base for thinking about changes in teacher compensation. In 1995, Kelley and Odden wrote a CPRE policy brief on teacher compensation, and in 1997 published a book on the topic, Paying Teachers for What They Know and Do: New and Smarter Compensation Strategies to Improve Schools (Corwin Press).
Several externally-generated events also occurred that contributed to the Project's early growth and evolution. First, many states and school districts began to tinker with teacher compensation again; one of the goals of the project was to fend off another round of failed merit pay programs and to nudge individuals addressing these issues toward Several externally-generated events also occurred that contributed to the Project's early growth and evolution. First, many states and school districts began to tinker with teacher compensation again; one of the goals of the project was to fend off another round of failed merit pay programs and to nudge individuals addressing these issues toward knowledge- and skill-based pay and to group-based performance awards rather than individually focused performance awards. Second, the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future began their work and ultimately issued their report, which not only addressed teacher preparation and ongoing development, but also the organization, structure and management of schools and teacher compensation. The final report recommended that states and districts move to some form of knowledge and skill-based pay for teachers.
Third, several states and districts contacted CPRE and said that they wanted to move forward on the teacher compensation issue, and begin to design new compensation elements that included either school-based performance awards or knowledge- and skill-based pay, or both. CPRE conducted design seminars with several states and districts to share with research findings on the design and implementation of alternative compensation approaches. As an extension of some of the initial contacts, CPRE began to work in a few locations, with a ground rule that a combined union and administrative team must be involved and both parties must want to work together on these issues.
Phase 2 of the project focused on school-based performance award programs and phase 3 focuses on knowledge- and skill-based pay programs.