Summary: Many obstacles to implementation of Denver's plan have been overcome, but not all. Board of Education and district voters must clear the plan before it can take effect. Performance pay is the piece that initially caught my eye; also of interest to realists (how do we make a transition from present system to one quite different?) is the planned teacher choice between old and new pay systems .All elements are very much worth your review -- many considerations have been carefully weighed by both system members and outside consultants. (I will refer back to this system as I analyze my [theoretical] Fair Shares teacher pay system and contrast it with this one.)
Denver's Announcement is below:
Tentative Agreement on New Compensation PlanCollective Bargaining Agreement Heading for a Vote
The DCTA and DPS bargaining teams have successfully negotiated a nine-year tentative agreement (access the tentative agreement in Word or PDF format) on the new Professional Compensation System for Teachers (ProComp). A four page summary of the agreement describes the key provisions.
The tentative collective bargaining agreement is scheduled for a vote by the Denver Board of Education February 19. It is scheduled for a vote by DCTA members March 8-19. Both parties must approve the agreement and voters must approve a mill levy increase for the ProComp system to take effect.
The ProComp system offers teachers an opportunity to significantly increase their career earnings while also advancing district instructional goals. ProComp would reward teachers for improving student growth, for receiving satisfactory evaluations, for working in highly challenged schools and for increasing their skills and knowledge.
Current teachers will have up to seven years to choose to opt in to the new system or they can elect to remain under the current system. ProComp and the current system will operate concurrently as long as some teachers remain in the present system. New teachers hired after January 2006 would be placed in the ProComp system. Teachers can see how they would fare under the new plan by using the Salary Calculator.
The ProComp system will require that voters pass a mill levy of $25 million that would be placed in a trust fund used solely for teacher compensation. It would remain separate from the general fund. The system has been developed using an economic model that projects costs 50 years into the future to ensure that the system is affordable and sustainable.
A transition team of teachers and administrators will oversee details implementing the new system. Current plans call for the first bonuses to be awarded in the 2005-2006 school year, once the mill levy is passed.
You can download a full copy of the tentative agreement in Word or PDF format. A news release on the new system is available at Task Force News. Updates on what is contained in the new system will be posted on this Web site.
There may be enough features in this plan to encourage a majority of stakeholders to support it.
On the other hand, perhaps we need to worry that the variety of features dilutes appeal to the voters; something for everybody, means too little for most? In my next entry I'll compare the anticipated results of this system (published by Denver) with the simulated effects of the system outlined in my January 27th entry.
