Monthly Archives: February 2015

Unionville-Chadds Ford Schools – Let’s Become World Class

Every child comes to UCF with incredible potential, with a world of opportunities ahead of them.   A world class education will open the door to those possibilities, and will prepare all students to realize their highest aspirations.

We already have a strong school district today.    Our graduates go on to challenging universities, interesting careers, and fulfilling lives.   UCF is known as a good place to work, and we attract the best teachers and administrators.   We have generous, supportive, and involved families.  We are well-run, fiscally responsible, and have a top credit rating.

Building on these strengths, we can do even better. Our students deserve world class schools – the best around.  What does world class look like?

  1. All students graduating fully prepared to achieve their academic and career goals.
  2. Great teachers and administrators who stay and thrive.
  3. A behavioral climate that is safe, supportive, respectful, and encouraging.
  4. A proven curriculum that accelerates student learning and engagement.
  5. Well-informed families who are fully engaged in our educational mission
  6. A fiscally strong and efficiently run district, mindful of our tax-payers.

To become world class, our practices need to get even better in each of these six areas.  And we should pursue this because of what a world class education brings:  more life opportunities to each one of our UCF students.

In coming posts, I will expand on each of these six priorities.

The Value of Teacher Benefits – Summary

UCF’s employee benefit programs are an important part of total compensation.  And if we want to attract, retain, and reward Great Teachers, we need competitive benefit plans.   In my most recent posts I have evaluated the ‘richness’ of teacher benefits on three dimensions;

  • Access to benefits.  What benefits are offered to UCF teachers?  (see part 1)
  • Quality of benefits.  How complete and full is the coverage of each benefit? (see part 2)
  • Cost.   How valuable is the benefit, and how much of a contribution do UCF teachers make to pay for each benefit. (see part 3)

In each evaluation, I presented benchmarks for comparison, and I rated the relative position of UCF benefits against the market.  Evaluating quality was the most difficult task because of a lack of good data, so I benchmarked UCF benefits against my own company’s benefit plans, which are known to be very competitive.

Here is a summary of the results: Continue reading →

The Value of Teacher Benefits – Part 3

This is Part 3 of my review of UCF teacher benefits.  If we want to attract, retain, and reward Great Teachers, we need to have competitive compensation, and benefits is a key part of the compensation package.  In Part 1, we found that access to benefits at UCF is very good.  In Part 2, we found that the quality of UCF benefit plans are very competitive as a whole.

As the cost of benefits has increased over the past decade, employers have passed a larger and larger share of medical, dental, and other premiums on to its employees.   In today’s post we will look at the share of benefits expenses that are passed on to our UCF teachers, and compare this against national averages. Continue reading →

Education Links #7

Articles from around the web that caught my eye this week.  Enjoy!

1.  A shining example of what happens every day:   a UCF teacher helping a UHS student reach his potential  (h/t J. Sanville)

2.  No surprise — PSERS given a D+ by NCTQ

3.  Interesting idea: Arizona will now mandate a civics test for high school graduation

4.  A different career path for a teacher:  becoming a defensive assistant for the Super Bowl champs. (An old but interesting interview with coach Brendan Daly).

5.  Contrary to what you may have heard, the U.S.  lags other countries at educating kids from well-educated families

The Value of Teacher Benefits – Part 2

In my most recent post we looked at the benefits UCF offers to classroom teachers.   And we saw that UCF gives teachers access to a wide range of benefits — better than what most employers (including other school districts) typically offer.

But what about the quality of the benefits UCF offers?   Just offering a plan is not enough … not all medical or dental plans offer the same types of coverage.  Are the quality of UCF teacher benefits higher or lower than those offered by other employers? Continue reading →