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Superintendent Peter Gorman today unveiled an ambitious four-year plan that would scrap the tradition of paying better-educated teachers higher salaries and replace it with a pay-for-performance system tied to students' academic growth.
Gorman, in announcing the plan this morning during his fourth annual State of the Schools speech, called it a “profound, far-reaching cultural change” necessary to push top students higher and close longstanding racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps.
He said he hopes to have the plan in place within four years, and wants all employees, himself included, subject to a pay-for-performance rules. He said he expects to meet some resistance from veteran teachers – especially those who have received salary increases for obtaining advanced degrees.
“I expect teachers will be uncomfortable with this. It's different. It's change. It's hard,” he said after delivering his speech. But he added: “There is no link between increasing student achievement and (teachers obtaining) graduate degrees…It just isn't there.”
One teachers' association leader who heard the speech voiced immediate skepticism. Mary McCray, head of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators, said some veteran teachers will feel wronged if he changes the rules.
“You will have some who will say, ‘I worked for my advanced degrees simply because I'm not paid enough,'” she said. “In some districts (pay-for-performance) is working, but it's working because the teachers are given the option” of switching to it.
Gorman said he will make sure the changes happen “with our teachers, not to our teachers.” He wants them on district panels that will hammer out the reforms.
He said a recently enacted N.C. law allows CMS to create the new teacher pay system, but a majority of affected teachers must vote to approve it. CMS employs about 9,000 teachers, and nearly 20,000 workers overall.
Some legislative details remain to be worked out, he added.
Shortly after his speech, N.C. Rep. Ruth Samuelson, R-Mecklenburg, a member of the House Education Committee, told several of the newly elected school board members she supports Gorman's plan. But, she added, teachers' unions often block such changes in Raleigh.
“To the degree you all can help (Gorman) implement what he said, you've got my support forever,” she told incoming board members Joyce Waddell, Tim Morgan and Eric Davis.
The new pay plan serves as a centerpiece of Strategic Plan 2014, the second of Gorman's four-year plans.
Gorman said that while many of his first goals have been met more remains to be done. He said about a third of this year's eighth-graders won't graduate with their peers in 2014.
“Suppose UPS or Federal Express said they were only going to deliver two-thirds of their packages?” he asked. “Two-thirds doesn't cut it in those areas …and it doesn't cut it in education either.”
