Tag Archives: strategic compensation

Pay for performance (PFP) is an incredibly hotly debated facet of education reform. I’ve never really quite understood that because, well, rewarding folks for doing great work strikes me as common sense. I mean, I get more allowance money if I do my chores well, and not so much if I “clean my room” by just moving a pile of toys from one corner to another, less visible one. Yet as a recent Denver Post article highlights, things aren’t always as clear cut for folks who are skeptical of PFP. The article provides very brief outlines of PFP system variants in Denver, Jefferson County, and Douglas County. It also launches a number of thinly veiled assaults against the concept of pay for performance, which means that—you guessed it—Little Eddie feels compelled to say a few things. Before we get to that, though, I find it interesting (and slightly disingenuous) that the article does not include any mention of Harrison School District’s innovative compensation model. Harrison’s system is certainly the most fully developed and interesting PFP system in the state, and perhaps one of the most intriguing in the nation. Sure, Harrison is significantly smaller than the three largest districts in […]

Like Elmer’s glue, numbers get sticky when misused. And just like glue is tough (but fun!) to peel off your hands, it can take a little while to clear up sticky number messes. Yet clean them up we must, and so I dedicate today’s post to clearing up some numerical confusion surrounding Dougco’s pay-for-performance system. The most recent illustration of sticky confusion in Dougco comes courtesy of comments on a recent Denver Post op-ed written by Doug Benevento, Vice President of the Douglas County Board of Education. Some of the comments are the typical anti-reform, pro-union rhetoric to which we’ve all sadly grown accustomed, but some others hint at some more systemic misunderstandings of the district’s pay structure and the numbers associated with it. Those need to be addressed. The first big misunderstanding is DCSD’s actual turnover rate. One commenter accuses Benevento of “finagling” (great word) CDE’s official 17.28% teacher turnover figure to make the district look better. Yet it is CDE, not Benevento, doing the finaglin’.