HOUSTON TEACHERS GET BONUSES LIKE ATHLETES WEDNESDAY!

IS THIS THE MOTIVATION NEEDED FOR GOOD TEACHERS?

More than 15,000 HISD teachers, principals, instructional and non-instructional staff will receive performance pay totaling $40.4 million tomorrow for helping children improve in the classroom. This exceeds last year’s payout by approximately $8.8 million.

In all, 15,688 HISD employees will receive performance pay ranging from $25 to $15,530. That’s 88 percent of eligible HISD employees. The largest bonus paid to any one teacher is $10,890 with an average award of $3,606. Among principals who received some award, amounts ranged from $240 to $15,530 with an average award of $6,124

On Wednesday January 27^th at 10 a.m. Superintendent Dr. Terry Grier will visit Burbank Middle School (315 Berry, 77022) to congratulate one of three teachers in the district to receive the top dollar amount. Employees at Burbank are receiving more than $560,000 in bonuses.

“These bonuses are a testament to the high quality staff we have on our campuses and their focus on differentiating instruction to meet the needs of all HISD children,” says Superintendent Dr. Terry Grier. “The students are winners as well because our data shows they are making notable academic gains from year to year because of the efforts of our dedicated employees.”

The performance pay program is part of ASPIRE (Accelerating Student Progress Increasing Results & Expectations), HISD’s comprehensive school improvement strategy. HISD’s performance pay program for teachers is one of the largest in the country. The program measures teacher and school impact on student academic progress from year to year using both achievement data and value added analysis

The ASPIRE awards program model divides growth into four groups known as quartiles. There was significant growth in all the quartiles for the 2008-2009 school year. Of the 270 HISD campuses with value added scores, 224 (83 percent) had statistically significant growth across all grades and subjects.

“For those teachers who did not receive an Aspire award this year, it doesn’t mean their students or their campus didn’t grow academically, it just means that their performance wasn’t in the top 50 percent for last year,” says Assistant Superintendent for Research And Accountability Carla Stevens.

Prior to Wednesday’s payout, every teacher was given access to a special online website where they could see their estimated bonus amount and information about the value-added scores that led to the calculation of the bonus amount. That gave employees plenty of time to check the information and ask questions or raise concerns.

Non-instructional staff at schools, including teacher aides and clerks, also had a chance to take part in the performance pay program. 3951 non-instructional staff members at schools earned bonuses ranging from $25 to $1870.

HISD launched the teacher performance pay program in January 2007 as a way of identifying and rewarding teachers for strong academic growth by children and as a tool for recruiting and retaining the best teachers. Since 2007, HISD has awarded over $113 million in teacher performance pay.