In my most recent posts on Rewarding Great Teachers, we have looked at base pay of our teachers. But benefits are also an important part of total compensation. In my next four posts, I will pull apart UCF’s benefit offering and evaluate the overall competitiveness of each component. Continue reading
In my prior post we looked at Unionville-Chadds Ford (UCF) teacher pay. Today we compare teacher pay in UCF to other school districts in Pennsylvania. If we are going to attract, retain, and reward Great Teachers, our compensation needs to be competitive. This is going to be chart-intensive. If you don’t like data and charts, proceed at your own risk! Continue reading
Articles from around the web that caught my eye this week. Enjoy!
1. The past and future of labor unions (not specifically about teachers unions)
2. The man who developed common core math standards, who now believes it is all about curriculum.
3. A balanced profile of the educational services beheamoth Pearson PLC
We have seen in prior posts that teacher compensation has a unique pay structure, different from that found in almost all other industries. And we have also seen that the factors that increase UCF teacher pay (years of experience and advanced degrees) have little or no relationship to student achievement.
In today’s post we shift our focus away from the system of pay and look at the amount of teacher pay. How much do we pay classroom teachers, on average, in UCFSD? If we are going to attract, retain, and reward Great Teachers, our compensation needs to be competitive. Continue reading
A few things from around the internet that caught my eye in the past week. Enjoy!
1. Indiana considers union proposal to reward National Board Certified Teachers
2. A defense of annual, standardized testing
3. Report on Kids and Reading from Scholastic and related NYTimes Article
4. Education Reform Moonshot (h/t J. Hellrung)
I recently wrote about the misalignment of the step and lane single salary schedule with student outcomes. I also wrote about the historical reasons for the single salary schedule, and noted that it brought about positive change in the early 1900s.
In our current day and age, we know that attracting, rewarding, and retaining Great Teachers is critical if we want to have great schools. In today’s post we will look at four talent challenges that school systems face. And we see how a single salary schedule gets in the way of addressing those challenges. Continue reading
For the past month, I have been writing about Rewarding Great Teaching. How do we attract, develop, retain and especially reward Great Teachers? (See my series intro here.)
The step and lane pay system rewards masters degrees and experience. But research in the last 15 years has repeatedly shown that neither additional degrees nor more years of experience (beyond the first 5) lead to greater student achievement. So if we want to financially reward Great Teachers , step and lane is not the answer. Perhaps there is a different credential that does reliably signal high quality teaching? Continue reading
Tonight is the January UCFSD school board work session, held in the UCF District office on the south side of Unionville High School. (All meeting materials are available here)
A few items on the Agenda are of special interest to me: Continue reading
A few things from around the internet that caught my eye in the past week. Enjoy!
1. PSERS pension fund still massively underfunded despite stellar fund returns in 2014
2. Seriously? January is school board director appreciation month. Just what we needed! Add it to the list … January is also Weight Loss Awareness Month, National Codependency Awareness Month, Stalking Awareness Month, and Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month.
3. Teacher Quality Pursued in Pittsburgh, but Groups Differ in Diagnoses and Solutions
4. How to Connect Curriculum with Standards in the Classroom
Here is a one page explanation of how teacher pay works at Unionville-Chadds Ford School District. Continue reading
Bob Sage 
