Pay Teachers More: Financial Planning for Reach Models

This report contains links to financial analyses of three of the 20+ Opportunity Culture school models. Savings and cost calculations of the models—Elementary Subject Specialization, Multi-Classroom Leadership, and Time-Technology Swap Rotation—illustrate that schools could increase excellent teachers’ pay up to approximately 130%, without increasing class sizes and within existing budgets. In some variations, schools may pay all teachers more, sustainably. Combining these and other sustainable models to extend the reach of excellent teachers and promote excellence by all instructional staff may produce even greater savings to fund teacher pay increases and other priorities, while producing excellent student outcomes.

The financial planning summary provides an overview of the ways that schools and their teachers can simultaneously reach more students with excellent teaching, expand teachers’ career opportunities, and sustainably fund higher pay and other priorities. The three financial planning briefs provide details and scenarios that illustrate the estimated savings possible under different approaches to the models, the estimated costs to support extended reach of excellent teachers, and the estimated range of possible pay increases for teachers—also summarized in the table below.

Financial Planning Summary: Describes the expected savings and costs of implementing reach models. This summary covers all model categories and includes a summary table.

Financial Planning for Elementary Subject Specialization: Describes how teachers in this school model may earn more, sustainably, with calculations of savings and costs showing how schools could increase teacher pay up to 43%, without increasing class sizes and within existing budgets. See more about this model here.

Financial Planning for Multi-Classroom Leadership: Describes how teacher-leaders in this school model may earn more, sustainably, with calculations of savings and costs showing how schools could increase teacher-leader pay between 67% and 134%, without increasing class sizes and within existing budgets. See more about this model here.

Financial Planning for Time-Technology Swap—Rotation: Describes how teachers in this school model may earn more, sustainably, with calculations of savings and costs showing how schools could increase teacher pay up to 41%, without increasing class sizes and within existing budgets. See more about this model here.

 

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Urban Schools Often Neglect Top Teachers While Keeping Weaker Ones

A new study finds that urban schools are systematically neglecting their best teachers, losing tens of thousands every year even as they keep many of their lowest-performing teachers indefinitely—with disastrous consequences for students, schools, and the teaching profession.

The study by TNTP, a national nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that all students get excellent teachers, documents the real teacher retention crisis in America’s schools: not only a failure to retain enough teachers, but a failure to retain the right teachers.

The Irreplaceables, released at an event featuring U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, NEA Secretary-Treasurer Rebecca Pringle, and DC Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson, spans four urban school districts encompassing 90,000 teachers and 1.4 million students. It focuses on the experiences of the “Irreplaceables”: teachers so successful at advancing student learning that they are nearly impossible to replace. Schools rarely make a strong effort to keep these teachers despite their success—and rarely usher unsuccessful teachers out.

As a result, the best and worst teachers leave urban schools at strikingly similar rates. The nation’s 50 largest districts lose approximately 10,000 Irreplaceables each year. Meanwhile, about 40 percent of teachers with more than seven years of experience are less effective at advancing academic progress than the average first-year teacher.

“America’s best teachers are truly irreplaceable,” said Secretary Duncan. “I’ve said that when it comes to teaching, talent matters tremendously. But TNTP’s report documents in painful detail that school leaders are doing far too little to nurture, retain, and reward great teachers—and not nearly enough to identify and assist struggling teachers. Our teachers, who play such a crucial role in the lives of children, deserve a profession built on respect and rigor. And our children deserve—and need—to learn from those irreplaceable teachers.”

The study attributes negligent retention patterns to three major causes:

1. Inaction by school principals. Less than 30 percent of Irreplaceables plan to leave for reasons beyond their school’s control. Simple strategies, like public recognition for a job well done, boost their plans to stay by as many as six years. Yet two-thirds indicated that no one had encouraged them to return for another year. Similarly, principals rarely try to counsel out low performers, even though replacing them with a brand-new teacher will immediately achieve better academic results 75 percent of the time.

2. Poor school cultures and working conditions. Schools that retain more Irreplaceables have strong cultures where teachers work in an atmosphere of mutual respect, leaders respond to poor performance, and great teaching is the priority. Turnover rates among Irreplaceables were 50 percent higher in schools lacking these traits.

3. Policies that impede smarter retention practices. A number of policy barriers hamper principals from making smarter retention decisions. Because of inflexible, seniority-dominated compensation systems, for example, 55 percent of Irreplaceables earn a lower salary than the average low-performing teacher.

The report notes that current retention patterns stymie school turnaround efforts and prevent the teaching profession from earning the prestige it deserves. It offers two major recommendations:

1. Make retention of Irreplaceables a top priority. Districts should aim to keep more than 90 percent of their Irreplaceables annually, monitor and improve school working conditions, pay the best teachers what they’re worth and create new career pathways that extend their reach.

2. Strengthen the teaching profession with higher expectations. Leaders at all levels should set a new baseline standard for effectiveness: Teachers who cannot teach as well as the average first-year teacher should be considered ineffective and dismissed or counseled out (unless they are first-year teachers). Policymakers should change teacher hiring and layoff policies that discourage schools from enforcing higher expectations.

“Our schools should be obsessed with keeping their best teachers. But today it appears that they are almost completely oblivious to them,” said TNTP President Tim Daly. “It’s degrading to teachers and their profession. The challenge now is to address both sides of this crisis: the neglect of our best teachers, and the indifference to performance that keeps unsuccessful teachers in the classroom for too long.”

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Public High Schools Admit Students Based on Academic Record

Schools disproportionately serve Asians and African Americans; Whites and Latinos underrepresented

A new report, “Exam Schools from the Inside,” investigates 165 public high schools in the United States that are dedicated to teaching top achievers. These high schools are sometimes known as “exam schools” in reference to their selective admissions criteria, which can include entrance exams. Researchers Chester E. Finn, Jr. and Jessica Hockett have explored these institutions, asking if their “whole school” focus on high achievers might play a larger role in educating top students in a national climate “consumed with gap closing.”

Finn and Hockett’s investigation shows that the schools are more racially diverse, taken as a whole, than is widely believed. African Americans comprise 30 percent of their enrollment versus 17 percent in the larger public high school population. Asian Americans comprise 21 percent of their enrollment, compared with 5 percent of all high-schoolers. Hispanic students are underrepresented, however, as are white students. Academically selective public high schools are 35 percent white and 13 percent Hispanic, as compared to 56 percent and 20 percent, respectively, in the public high school universe. Economically, the exam school student body is only slightly less poor than the U.S. public high school population.

Some exam schools – such as Stuyvesant, Boston Latin, Thomas Jefferson and Illinois Math and Science Academy – are well known, but the sector as a whole (enrolling 136,000 students, about 1 percent of the total high school population) is little understood. The schools spark controversy; some people think that they are elitist or exclusive while others believe that selectivity contradicts the mission of public education. The schools are vulnerable to budget cuts, even though they are vastly oversubscribed by eager applicants.

The authors surveyed the schools’ leaders and visited 11 schools, finding them to be “serious, purposeful places: competitive but supportive, energized yet calm.” Students want to be at these schools and behavior problems are minimal. Surveyed schools reported a 91% graduation rate.

Most exam schools offer AP or International Baccalaureate (IB) courses, but many also (or instead) feature other kinds of specialized offerings. Schools with a STEM focus or university affiliations, for example, offer courses that few traditional high schools provide – such as Human Infectious Diseases, Chemical Pharmacology, and Vector Calculus.

With few exceptions (chiefly in Louisiana), exam schools are not charter schools. Most teachers in exam schools are subject to the provisions of collective-bargaining contracts, but almost one_in five is not (or not fully) subject to seniority-based staffing decisions. Nearly two-thirds of survey respondents indicated that teacher-hiring decisions are made at the school level or jointly by school and district.

These “whole school” models appear to offer the kind of dedication to high achievement, as well as reinforcement from similarly focused peers, that serve students with exceptional abilities well. Whether the U.S. creates more schools of this kind or widens its offerings of specialized programs in regular district schools, the authors observe that “If the best of such schools are hothouses for incubating a disproportionate share of tomorrow’s leaders in science, technology, entrepreneurship, and other sectors that bear on society’s long-term prosperity and well-being, we’d be better off as a country if we had more of them.”

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