Alexandria’s public school officials are overhauling how they recruit, evaluate and pay their teachers, drawing an unusual ally for the three-year transformation: a national teachers union. The idea behind the partnership between the National Education Association and Alexandria City Public Schools is to “go beyond current pay-for-performance models” and forge a new mold for compensation, benefits and professional growth.
Superintendent Morton Sherman explained in a memo that the traditional model, which provides step pay raises to teachers as they work more years, isn’t working because Alexandria’s diverse student body isn’t keeping up on standardized tests.
“We know we can do better,” Sherman said. But he also noted, “Too often we have seen school districts create models of teacher professional learning and compensation which are based on artificial incentives … and narrow measures of student achievement.”
He proposed “career path options” allowing teachers who demonstrate excellence in the classroom to become master teachers, lead teachers or “Fred Day” scholar teachers (Day was the first black school board member in the state). Each career path would comprise six salary steps, which would require the approval of a committee of teachers and administrators to move between.
These ideas spawned the “Total Compensation Review” and the partnership with the NEA, which school officials believe is the first of its kind. By 2014, they hope to investigate and determine the best ways for ACPS to recruit, place, develop, evaluate and compensate its employees.
Stephen Wilkins, the project’s director for Alexandria schools, said teacher feedback will determine what distinguishes each kind of career path from another. So far, the master, lead and scholar teachers would work more days each year than a regular teacher.
“It’s not a top-down approach. This is bottom-up,” said Wilkins, adding that the school system also is looking to partner with George Mason University, where 5 to 7 percent of its new teachers graduate from each year.
“They could change some of their programs or adapt some of their programs to adapt to the specific needs of Alexandria,” he said.
Alexandria’s diverse student population is chock-full of individual needs: 65 percent of students are black or Hispanic, and 22 percent are English language-learners. Perhaps most challenging, 52 percent of Alexandria’s 12,400 students qualify for free or reduced lunch, the schools’ indicator of poverty.
Under the current compensation model, Alexandria teachers receive salaries based on their college degrees, number of years with the school system, and number of days they work each year. The most educated teachers can reach salaries of $122,000.
It’s the only school division in the state that has not frozen teachers’ salaries any of the last three years.
