A New York
City charter school in Washington Heights will test if significantly higher
pay for
teacher is indeed the key to improving school.
The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay
teachers $125,000, plus a potential bonus based on schoolwide performance. That is roughly two and a half times the national average teacher salary and higher than the base salary of all but the most senior teachers in the most generous districts nationwide.
The school’s creator and first principal, Zeke M. Vanderhoek, contends that high salaries will lure the best teachers. The point of this initiative is to put in practice the conclusion that teacher quality is the crucial ingredient for success.
In exchange for their high salaries, teachers at the new school, the Equity Project, will work a longer day and year and assume responsibilities that used to fall to other staff members. To make ends meet, the school, which will use only public money and charter school grants for all but its building, will scrimp elsewhere.
The school will open with seven teachers and 120 students, most of them from low-income Hispanic families. At full capacity, it will have 28 teachers and 480 students. It will have no assistant principals, and only one or two social workers. Its classes will have 30 students.The
principal will start off earning just $90,000.
While the notion of raising teacher pay to attract better candidates may seem simple, the issue is at the crux of policy debates rippling through school systems nationwide, over how teachers should be selected, compensated and judged, and whether teacher quality matters more than, say, class size.
Mr. Vanderhoek’s school, approved by the city’s Education Department and the State Board of Regents, is poised to be one of the country’s most closely watched educational experiments, one that could pressure the city and its teachers’ union to rethink the pay for teachers in traditional schools.
Yet the model is raising questions. The hope is that only one or two social workers will be able to make ends meet and that by guiving the teachers higher pays the other aspects of what a good school requires do not damaged.
Mr. Vanderhoek won approval for the school after presenting city and state officials with a detailed proposal and budget.
The school’s
students will be
selected through a lottery weighted toward underperforming children and those who live nearby. It has generated much buzz with its e-mail blasts and postings on education and employment Web sites.
Some are still having a hard time coping with principals being payed less then teachers. their argument is that without the leader role of the principal the schools will have chaos.
Mr. Vanderhoek is trying to raise money to lease space in the neighborhood and build a permanent building. But he has made a strategic decision to cover other expenses with city, state and federal money, plus a few grants. “We’re saying, ‘Look, we can do it on public funding, and we want to inspire other people to do it on public funding.’ ”
The school’s teachers will be selected through a rigorous application process outlined on its Web site, www.tepcharter.org, and run by Mr. Vanderhoek. Only those scoring at the 90th percentile in the verbal section of the GRE, GMAT or similar tests need apply. The process will culminate in three live teaching auditions.
Mr. Vanderhoek said he planned to be principal for at least four years. After that, who knows? He could be promoted to teacher.
More reviews about the New York Times