At Struggling Schools, Offer Of 2 Bonuses

Retention of Teachers, Higher Scores Are Goals

Divided 5,000 ways, $3 million could cover a $600 check for every teacher in Anne Arundel County. But Superintendent Eric J. Smith would rather use the money to reward good instruction at the schools that need it most.

The school district is offering performance bonuses to every teacher and principal at struggling schools. Teachers will earn $1,500, and principals $5,000, simply for remaining at schools that fail to make "adequate yearly progress" for two years in a row under the federal No Child Left Behind rules. They'll get an identical bonus if the school meets improvement targets the following year.

"It's a critical piece, I think, in school reform in America," Smith said. "Performance pay is something that needs to be one of the major cornerstones of moving student achievement to a new level."

School districts around the region have been looking for ways to retain teachers at struggling schools. Frederick County teachers, for instance, are offered lucrative 11-month contracts to work at low-performing schools. In Howard County, teachers at struggling schools were the first to get laptop computers.

Some innovative programs combine teacher retention with another goal, higher test scores, by offering cash incentives for low-performing schools to improve.

Fairfax County offers a system of bonus pay somewhat like Anne Arundel's. In a program called Project Excel, all permanent employees at low-performing schools are eligible for cash bonuses if the schools improve on an achievement index. Awards, based on the degree of improvement, range from $1,000 to $2,000 for teachers and administrators and from $500 to $1,000 for other staff members. Eleven schools qualified for bonuses this year.

The incentives for Anne Arundel teachers began this school year. Teachers at 14 schools that qualify for bonus pay have earned about $1.5 million just for staying put; that money will be paid in June. The second round of bonuses hinges on how the schools do on the Maryland School Assessment, taken in March. Schools that meet their adequate yearly progress goals will receive another set of bonus checks in the 2005-06 academic year.

Schools that miss their progress goals two years in a row are placed on a watch list. Each subsequent failure moves the school closer to possible state takeover. Schools must meet their targets for two consecutive years to exit the watch list.

The Anne Arundel district will pay the first $1.5 million in bonuses from the fiscal 2005 budget, which earmarked just $323,000 for such purposes. Finding the rest of the money has been a challenge, Smith said, but the funds are there. The budget for fiscal 2006, which was to be released yesterday in preliminary form, will include enough funds for bonuses at the 14 flagged schools if they all improve.

"You could either refer to it as the worst case, or we refer to it as the best-case scenario," said Synthia Shilling, assistant Anne Arundel superintendent.

District leaders must now decide whether to extend the bonuses to other staff members at the struggling schools, following Fairfax County's lead. Should teacher's assistants get bonus checks? What about secretaries?

"It is an issue that I've had many phone calls on," said Cynthia Galla, a teacher's assistant who represents her colleagues in the Anne Arundel teachers union. "They are kind of depressed about the fact that the person who sits next to them is getting a big raise, and they're doing the same work and they're getting nothing."

Smith said he couldn't discuss the bargaining-table specifics, but he favors rewarding a broader range of employees.

"I believe in team performance pay," he said. "I think it's important that our teams be recognized, and I think that our aides play an important part in that."