As with most labor disputes, both sides in the current struggle between Denver Public Schools and the Denver Classroom Teachers Association have put forward some compelling arguments.
On one side, we can all acknowledge that Denver is an increasingly expensive place to live and that teachers need to be paid more if they’re to have a shot at living comfortably within the city limits. The average Denver teacher salary, $57,000 with incentives, falls slightly below the city’s median household income of $60,098.
And the central administration of DPS has grown steadily over the years; it could use some slimming down so that more taxpayer money can go to classroom teacher pay.
But as we teeter on the brink of a teachers strike, the bargaining position of the DCTA would, if adopted, heighten inequities in a school district where enormous achievement gaps show no sign of narrowing. Thatap the line DPS is trying to hold: maintaining some vestiges of a 13-year-old compensation system that pays teachers in part for taking on tough challenges and showing results.
Itap important to remember that the current impasse centers on ProComp, the teacher compensation system adopted by voters in 2005 with a $25 million annual tax increase. One of the ideas that drove ProComp was “rewarding teachers for boosting student achievement and teaching in tough schools,” according to a Nov. 2, 2005 article in The Denver Post. “They also could get bonuses for teaching one of the ‘hard to teach’ subjects such as English-language-acquisition classes or middle-school math.”
Thatap how ProComp was sold to voters: as a pay-for-performance system that would allow teachers taking on tough assignments and boosting student achievement to be rewarded for their commitment and their efforts.
ProComp has been diluted over the years, and most teachers reap some of its benefits, rather than only those the system was designed to incentivize.
If the DCTA has its way in this dispute, virtually all of the money that rewards teachers for working in the most challenging schools would be redistributed to all teachers as part of an increasingly retrograde salary schedule.
Making that change, which new Superintendent Susan Cordova is resisting, would be a terrible idea.
Before ProComp, the most challenging schools typically received the largest share of teachers who had been dismissed from another school but had to, under contract rules, be placed in another district school.
Is that the era to which we want to return — one where the students with the greatest needs are taught by the teachers least equipped to meet those needs?
The answer is emphatically no. All kids need and deserve excellent teachers. DPS needs to devise strategies to ensure that more of the strongest teachers, not fewer, work in the schools where they are needed most. Thatap what equity looks like.
To her credit, Cordova has acknowledged that DPS needs to change. She has committed to cutting $10 million in administrative costs to help pay for teacher raises. And those raises, under the DPS proposal, would average close to 10 percent.
Is that enough? Perhaps not. But itap important to acknowledge that external factors — in particular conflicting state constitutional amendments — do more to hamstring school district finances than any internal decisions Cordova and other superintendents make about how to distribute funds.
In an era of endless government shutdowns and increasing polarization, a call for cooler heads and reason to prevail may seem naïve. But as the father of two current DPS students, I urge the DCTA and its members to examine whether striking will further their aims, or do much of anything except hurt the kids with whose education they are entrusted.
Nate Easley is CEO of RootED, a nonprofit created to accelerate the availability of world-class public education in Denver. He served on the Denver school board from 2009-13, and was the board president from 2009-11.
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