LEAD’s innovative performance-based teacher pay program featured in The Tennessean

LEAD’s innovative performance-based teacher pay program was featured in The Tennessean on Feb. 10. From LEAD Cameron teacher Alyssa Patel:

“It really allows you to drive your own path forward,” Patel said of the compensation model. “Which you don’t usually get in teaching. You usually have to put in years … to move up (in pay).”

To read more, visit this link or continue reading the story by Jason Gonzales below.

LEAD Public Schools looks to bonuses based on educator knowledge to boost teacher retention

When LEAD Public Schools introduced a new teacher compensation model that includes performance bonuses, some teachers were skeptical.

Across the country, most teacher bonuses have rewarded teachers for student test scores, sparking arguments about fairness. 

“It was definitely somewhat worrying,” said Morgan Brotan, a teacher at the charter school network’s LEAD Southeast middle school.

The goal, however, was to attract and retain teachers, said Dwayne Tucker, LEAD’s executive director, not to push them away. 

At a time when schools in Nashville and across the nation are finding it difficult to keep teachers in the classroom, Tucker said the goal was to look toward a model that incentivized a teacher’s development.

Tucker said he looked at models used elsewhere. What he and his staff found were models that included a dizzying stack of papers and could barely be explained. He wanted something simple.

This year, LEAD revealed a new model that pays teachers based on their own learning and bases that on a state rubric that outlines skills that best serve students in the classroom. The goal is to ensure teachers improve to get the best educators in front of students.

“The magic in ours is the simplicity,” Tucker said. “Teachers can follow it.

Compensation model ‘allows you to drive your own path forward’

Cameron College Prep math teacher Alyssa Patel said she is familiar with the state’s teaching rubric, having used it during her entire six years as a teacher.

She tries to model the aspects that outline good teaching every day, including on a recent Thursday at Cameron College Prep. She presents the lessons students are learning, engages them in the work and questions students on what they are learning.

Patel said she knows she has weaknesses. 

She said the new teacher compensation model gives her an incentive outside of her competitive spirit to get better.

“It really allows you to drive your own path forward,” Patel said of the compensation model. “Which you don’t usually get in teaching. You usually have to put in years … to move up (in pay).”

Depending on an evaluation score over numerous observations into classroom instruction, teachers can earn up to a 10% pay raise over the course of a year. The base teacher pay at LEAD is $44,000 a year, according to the school.

Tucker said he hasn’t set a cap for how much teachers could earn because he wants the best teachers to see a future at the school. He’s made room in the budget for pay by cutting redundant services and contracts, as well as finding efficiencies, he said.

Already, pay has increased at the school after the first semester, according to Chris Elliott, LEAD’s head of academics. 

“We looked at a lot of teacher compensation models and what you’ll find is they failed,” Elliott said. “They failed because they were based on one day of student testing, not over what the teacher has done over the course of the year. Not over what they know is effective. And we are able to reward those high performers.”

And at a charter school network where turnover was once high, the hope is the rising pay brings the best teachers back in front of kids next year and many years to come.

That in turn, Tucker said, will hopefully lead to gains in student learning.

Reach Jason Gonzales at jagonzales@tennessean.com and on Twitter @ByJasonGonzales.