Houston ISD Makes Significant Changes to Performance Pay Plan

Under the plan, dubbed ASPIRE (Accelerating Student Progress Increasing Results and Expectations), teachers could earn bonuses of up to $7,300. While improved student achievement in core subjects will earn teachers the biggest bonuses, teachers will continue to receive rewards for campus achievement, and, in response to criticism of the first plan, will earn bonuses for teamwork.

Houston Supt. Abelardo Saavedra acknowledged that the district stumbled in putting the initial plan in place. Teachers complained that the awards pitted them against one another, left out some top-notch performers, and that the plan was so complicated that it was difficult to understand what they had to do to receive a bonus. Media reports of the bonus amounts teachers earned (or did not earn) did little to help teacher morale.

In response to the criticism, Saavedra put together a team of 20 teachers and hired a nationally known expert on measuring student achievement to come up with a better system for measuring student progress and rewarding teachers.

After seven months of work, teachers on the team believe the new plan is a big improvement. Houston teacher group leaders haven’t warmed up to performance-based pay but praised the district for its effort to listen to teachers and redesign the plan.

The new plan will provide more and larger teacher bonuses, resulting in a $23 million price tag (the district paid out $15 million in bonuses last year). Teachers who don’t want to participate in the plan can opt out and won’t be eligible for bonuses, though the district will still collect data on the achievement of their students. The plan has three components:

• Campuswide improvement—Every staff member on a campus will earn a bonus if the average academic improvement of students is in the top half of all schools in the district.
• Individual core teacher performance—Teachers of core subjects (English, language arts, math, science, and social studies) whose students make the most academic progress can earn the largest rewards under this plan component: $5,000. Early Childhood through 2nd-grade teachers will be recognized as core teachers and earn smaller awards based on campus reading and math improvement. High school teachers will receive awards based on how their department performs compared to the same department at other high schools.
• Comparative campus improvement and achievement—Instructional staff will earn bonuses based on a school’s overall improvement compared with Texas schools with similar demographics and the school’s accountability rating.

The district expects to provide bonus checks in January.

Broad Foundation provides funds

The Broad Foundation, a philanthropic organization that supports education in a variety of ways, awarded a $3.6 million grant to Houston ISD to help the district manage the plan’s data, plan for the program’s ongoing improvement, and pay for professional development to teach teachers and administrators how to use data to improve student outcomes.

“Performance pay is a concept that’s the standard in virtually every other industry,” said Eli Broad, founder of the foundation, on the district’s Web Site. “It makes sense that we pay teachers for their performance and reward those who are the most successful at improving student achievement. HISD is leading the nation by embracing a concept that will ultimately help attract and retain the very best teaching talent.”