Institutions, like people, get older. Sometimes, like people, they grow up.
The Denver Public Schools District 1 will mark its 103rd birthday on Feb. 28, 2006. If Denver voters approve ProComp (a pay-for-performance plan for teachers), the district may also toast its official maturity, following years of squabbling, ideological donnybrooks and serial ineffectiveness.
DPS is no different than other urban public school systems struggling with changing demographics, aging facilities and inadequate operating budgets.
Since 1970, when the U.S. District Court ordered busing for racial balancing, the already difficult job of managing a substantial workforce, numerous capital assets and an administrative bureaucracy led by one individual appointed by elected, volunteer board members was complicated by narrow political agendas and the absence of a cohesive vision.
In 1995, the courts lifted the desegregation order and it became possible to focus on other priorities. In 1996, two years after an agonizing five-day teachers’ strike, the school board and the teachers’ union figured out that collective bargaining meant exactly that: negotiating in good faith for the interests of both parties and for the benefit of school kids.
Following several national reports and serious soul-searching, the teachers’ union and administrative leadership adopted a pay for performance pilot in 1999. Sixteen schools – two high schools, two middle schools and 12 elementary schools – adopted it. The pilot sought to transform teacher compensation from the conventional seniority and experience paradigm to a system where teacher pay is tied directly to professional accomplishment.
The pilot ended in 2003, demonstrating quantifiable improvement in student achievement and teacher cooperation. It was so successful that teachers, administrators and board members undertook the districtwide ProComp initiative.
ProComp is this nation’s most innovative teacher-compensation system, designed in concert by the teachers’ union and the school administration. It rewards teachers for professional accomplishments – knowledge and new skills applied in the classroom and student growth measured by “longitudinal” testing, which means individual students are tracked as they pass through the school system. It also creates market incentives for the best teachers to work in low-performing classrooms with kids who may not speak English or who may come from difficult or impoverished homes.
The proposal Denver voters are asked to approve Nov. 1 has the power to make Denver the best urban school district in the country. When fully implemented, it will rebuild the teacher pay system from the ground up, holding teachers responsible as professionals, raising the district’s expectations of them and, more critically, applying market incentives and accountability for outcomes to the largest operating expense in the DPS budget: teacher pay.
ProComp is based on the belief that teachers can and do make a difference in how and what a child learns. Regardless of economic or ethnic background, ProComp gives teachers incentives to hone their skills and knowledge, teach in challenging classrooms, focus on student growth and implement satisfactory performance objectives, student by student.
It’s not a perfect plan. Like any new initiative in a democracy, it’s based on compromise. It understates the importance of quality teaching materials for every classroom, up-to-date facilities, technology and resources.
On the other hand, it’s grounded in a nine-year collective bargaining agreement, not the typical one- to three-year agreement. This will allow the program to become established and prove itself. ProComp is tied to larger district goals and puts pressure on the bureaucracy to perform and improve.
Brad Jupp, a DPS teacher since 1987, passionate union negotiator and now part of School Superintendent Michael Bennet’s senior leadership, is the driving force behind ProComp. He deserves much of the credit for the innovative approach that acknowledges “a single salary schedule can no longer support the pressures placed on it by the expectations of a 21st century public education system.”
His vision, hard work and hunger for accountability can benefit us all.
Susan Barnes-Gelt (bs13@qwest.net) served eight years on the Denver City Council and was an aide to former Denver Mayor Federico Pena. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.
