Quality Compensation for Teachers (Q Comp) Has Been Subverted by Lynn Nordgren and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers

Minnesota Statute 122A.413-415, providing for Quality Compensation for Teachers (Q Comp) has been subverted by the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers from its original intent to provide merit pay for teachers of highest caliber. In collaboration with officials at the Minneapolis Public Schools, Lynn Nordgren and her colleagues at MFT have formulated a corrupted version of Q Comp that fails to meet requirements of the statute enacted by the 2005 Minnesota legislature and signed by Governor Tim Pawlenty.

According to that statute, still on the books, the key components of Q Comp are 1) the provision of career ladders for teachers who remain in the classroom while modeling excellence and mentoring other teachers; 2) job-embedded professional development, giving all teachers opportunities to share and learn strategies that promote student learning in collaboration with colleagues; 3) performance pay, whereby teachers who rise to a designated standard of excellence are rewarded with merited emolument; 4) teacher evaluations that provide feedback to teachers for improved performance and serve as a major factor in determining the recipients of merit pay; and 5) an alternative salary schedule that “reforms the lockstep steps and lanes system” (which elevates pay for teachers based on years served and academic degrees attained) by making merit pay a major component.

Notice that, according to the still-prevailing law, the last three components are intimately connected by the concept of merit pay for teachers of true excellence. The steps and lanes system is the system of teacher remuneration that has prevailed in the United States since World War II. According to a document produced by the Minnesota Department of Education in 2005, the steps and lanes system represents a historical Phase III, superseding an early 20th century Phase II in which men earned more than women and high school teachers gained greater pay than elementary school teachers. The latter system had in turn replaced a pre-1900 Phase I in which individual teachers negotiated salary with the local school board.

In promoting Q Comp and superintending its foundation in law, the Pawlenty administration envisioned a Phase IV with “states and local school districts moving away from ‘single salary schedule’ to alternative salary schedules based on performance, knowledge and skills.”

The Application for Q Comp Aid currently posted by the Minnesota Department of Education still follows the prescriptions of Minnesota Statute 122A.413-415. Component 4 of that application is Performance Pay, with requirements for meeting schoolwide student achievement goals on standardized assessments, achievement by subgroups (grade level, team, or classroom), and a set performance standard through the teacher evaluation process (the latter appearing as component 3 of the application). Component 5, Alternative Salary Schedule, asks applicants to describe how the salary schedule has been reformed to determine a teacher’s vertical movement on indicators of student and teacher performance; and to provide a copy of the salary schedule grid and an example of how teachers now move through the reformed schedule.

An example of implementation of Q Comp as merit pay in the 2005 MDE document calls for the majority of teacher compensation to be aligned with a performance pay system that would in equal parts be based on teacher effectiveness according to an Instructional Standardized Rubric; and student achievement measures that include local standardized tests, teacher assessments, and schoolwide achievement as measured by the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs). Clearly, merit pay is at the core of the still prevailing statute.

But in forging their agreement, representatives of MFT and MPS have cynically provided for a token three dollars as a reward for those who demonstrate excellence in the classroom, apparently hoping that those who review their application at MDE will accept this subversion and decide in favor of their submission.

Representatives of MFT and MPS thus are hoping to use the $9 million that they stand to gain for the purposes of teacher planning and training time ($5.0 million), teacher evaluation ($2.8 million), and stipends for teachers who serve as pedagogical models and collegial mentors ($1.2 million).

These are purposes that should already be embedded in the Minneapolis Public Schools budget of nearly $720 million. Teacher training, teacher evaluation, and policies that highlight the efforts of faculty leaders should be ordinary expectations, not specially funded efforts of a K-12 system of public education.

Consider how much better that $9 million could be used. Calculating generously that 15 percent of the 2,978 teachers in the Minneapolis Public Schools could be evaluated as truly excellent, over $10,000 could then be designated as an initial salary boost for each of the 447 teachers who would qualify. And 129 new, higher quality teacher’s aides could be hired at an annual salary of $35,000 each.

Providing this kind of remunerative compensation for true teacher excellence would recognize a standard to which other teachers, seeking comparable pay hikes, should want to aspire.  Offering a salary likely to attract high quality teacher aides would gain much needed help for those students still caught in the achievement gap.

These sorts of initiatives would represent the type of genuine breakthroughs envisioned by those who authored the still-prevailing standards in Minnesota Statute 122A.413-415. They would recognize true teacher excellence. They would promote policies likely to raise student achievement. And they would constitute policies that are in accordance with, rather than subversion of, the law.