County considers teacher merit pay

Albemarle County school officials are trying to answer a question often asked: Should better teachers be paid more?

Considering an expansion of the school division’s current model — where pay is based almost exclusively on teachers’ seniority and degrees — the School Board discussed on Thursday a model allowing good teachers to make more money.

“I think some board members believe we have a compensation model that’s out of step with our strategic goals,” board Chairman Brian Wheeler said. “Pay for contribution means investing more in teachers who are contributing the most to student learning.”

An eight-person task force, which has met twice since it was formed in May, has explored numerous models that would allow teachers to earn compensation that exceeds their base salaries.

Some models would give teachers bonus pay for gains in student learning, while others would grant bonuses for teaching in high-poverty schools or in subject areas that are hard to staff. Other incentives could include additional pay for having specific skills or knowledge, or for serving in advanced teaching roles. 

The task force hopes to help answer an essential question: What’s the most fair way to judge how teachers are contributing to student learning?

“You have to be able to measure performance. That is the difficult part,” said task force member Lorna Gerome, Albemarle assistant director of human resources.

Teachers have expressed concern that compensation will be based strictly on student performance in Standards of Learning tests, according to school officials, who’ve batted down that possibility.

“Nobody is suggesting that pay for contribution would be based solely on test scores, because we know that won’t work,” Wheeler said. “You need to have multiple [measurements of contribution], or the teachers won’t buy into it.”

The county’s current scale is similar to many scales that schools throughout the country developed in the 1920s, designed to eliminate inequities based on factors such as gender and race, according to a staff report. The scale, which was objective and easy to administer, also encouraged teachers to pursue advanced degrees.

Steven Gissendanner, the president of the Albemarle Education Association, said that the school division is not pushing for a new compensation scale as part of next year’s budget, because it’s a long-term consideration that requires extensive research. If the schools do eventually adopt a contribution compensation scale, it likely will not happen for at least two budget cycles, said Gissendanner, a member of the task force.

The task force, which is continuing to research teacher pay models, plans to meet again in mid-October, Gerome said.  If new compensation models are passed in the future, “stable, consistent funding is critical for success,” she said. 

Bruce Benson, the division’s assistant superintendent of student learning, said that if schools decide to implement contribution pay scales, he recommends that the model first be studied on a small scale, as part of a pilot program.