Merit Pay Proposed for L.A. Teachers

Los Angeles school officials are proposing a new teachers contract that for the first time would link pay to student achievement, an idea that is likely to trigger a bitter confrontation with the teachers union.

The bulk of the incentives would be targeted at the district’s lowest-performing schools, about 300 campuses that landed at the bottom of the state’s recent academic rankings.

Teachers at those schools could earn as much as $7,000 a year in additional income if schoolwide scores rose by a prescribed amount and they developed specialized skills in math, science or other subjects. Individual teachers also could be rewarded if their students demonstrated marked success or improvement on the Stanford 9 exam and Advanced Placement tests.

If the proposal is implemented, the Los Angeles Unified School District will move to the forefront of a burgeoning and controversial movement to tie teacher pay to student achievement. About a dozen school districts are experimenting with similar pay structures, and several other districts and states are weighing such proposals.

“The system right now has failed a great many of our students,” said Howard Miller, the district’s chief operating officer. “We believe that proof of performance has to precede additional funding.”

But union leaders angrily rejected the proposal, saying that giving differential pay would undermine the collaboration between teachers and schools.

“Strike is a last resort, but we are prepared to do it if there is no other choice,” union President Day Higuchi said.

The union is open to rewarding schools for performance, he said, but cannot accept the practice of giving extra pay to individual teachers.

The district’s proposal is “totally unacceptable,” he said. “Schemes for paying some teachers what all teachers ought to get are not going to fly.”

Instead, the district should give all of its 35,000 teachers a 15% pay increase before it devises a system of schoolwide bonuses, he said.

Higuchi noted that the district and the union are in the early stages of the contract process. Miller and his staff on Tuesday will present their proposal to the board, which can revise it. Some board members indicated Friday that they favor “pay for performance,” but at least three expressed reservations about some aspects.

Contract negotiations are scheduled to formally open April 11.

Higuchi and other union officials also took issue with proposed contract provisions that would make teachers with poor evaluations ineligible for the incentives, strip stipends from bilingual teachers and give principals new authority to assign staff members as they see fit. Classroom assignments are currently based largely on the preferences of teachers with seniority.

The proposed contract calls for an overall 10% pay increase next year. Of that, 6% would go toward salary and benefit increases, with the remaining 4% earmarked for the rewards.

The rewards are tied to the state’s new accountability system, which sets targets for how much each school should improve its test scores. Teachers at any L.A. Unified school that surpasses the target would each be eligible for $2,000 next year. That would be on top of financial rewards offered by the state to those schools.

Plan Would Cost $180 Million a Year

Teachers at the lowest-performing schools could earn $3,000 on top of that if their campuses met their growth targets and saw their statewide rankings increase.

In addition, teachers who developed specialized skills in their subject areas--particularly in math and science--could earn an extra $2,000.

A new teacher who would ordinarily earn $37,000 could see that salary jump to $44,000, Miller said.

“We hope it provides incentives for teachers to teach in those low-performing schools,” he said. “The goal is to pay people very well for performance.”

Miller said the compensation package would make Los Angeles teachers among the best paid in the county. The plan would cost about $180 million a year, and the contract would cover two years.

Several members of the school board said they endorsed the idea of rewarding schools but expressed concern about singling out individual teachers with higher salaries, a practice that has come to be known as “merit pay” and that some educators argue pits teachers against one another.

“Merit pay by my way of thinking is diametrically opposed to bringing up the quality of education for all children,” said board member Julie Korenstein.

She and other trustees said the contract package will be refined in the coming weeks before it is submitted to the union.

“I don’t think the public is in the mood to give more money to teachers unless teachers are held to the same standard that those of us in the private sector are held to,” said trustee Caprice Young. “I honestly think teachers deserve much higher salaries than they get now, but these things have to go together.”

Los Angeles is the latest school district to venture into the volatile terrain of performance pay.

About a dozen other districts across the country already are exploring the idea, including those in Cincinnati, Boston, Philadelphia and Memphis, Tenn.

In recent months Denver has launched its own pilot program in selected schools that calls for many of the same provisions that Los Angeles is proposing. Several states also are examining pay-for-performance programs for their schools.

‘An Idea Whose Time Has Come’

There is an example of such a policy in the L.A. district’s own backyard: Vaughn Next Century Learning Center, a charter school in Pacoima.

More than 85% of Vaughn’s teachers have chosen an alternative pay schedule that awards bonuses--for example, $1,300 to those who demonstrate skill at teaching reading or helping students learn to speak English. Teachers also will be paid an extra $1,500 if the school meets its goals for raising test scores.

“Pay for performance for teachers is an idea whose time has come,” said Allen Odden, a professor at the University of Wisconsin in Madison who has written extensively on the subject and advised Los Angeles Unified. “It’s an idea that is being discussed all over the country.”

Miller and other L.A. district officials predicted that the proposed contract would be sent to the union largely unchanged.

“I think Miller is right about the way he will conduct the process, but he hasn’t met Murphy’s Law yet,” said board member David Tokofsky. “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. It takes a lot of careful planning and thinking to make a transformation in a giant system of teachers.”

* A BELMONT SALVO

City Council tells school board to reconsider its decision to abandon Belmont complex. B1