Idaho state law now mandates pay-for-performance for teachers, but school districts retain latitude in how p-f-p plans will be structured and administered. “With a Sept. 1 deadline nearing, administrators and teachers throughout Idaho are hammering out local approaches that will help determine who will get bonuses under Idaho’s new education reform plan,” begins an article in the August 6 Idaho Statesman. “In Nampa [where I taught for my last 28 years], a committee of teachers and administrators has been working on a local plan for weeks and likely will not finish until shortly before the deadline.”
Here, too, the Devil will be in the details. An accompanying photo shows Nampa School District’s Communications Officer Allison Westfall standing in front of a white board, leading a recent meeting, presumably of this committee. On this board is a list that I would imagine are suggestions by these committee members for further discussion as potential definitions of “performance.” The items are difficult to read in the photo, but they are of some interest:
- [Out of the frame]
- Graduation rate
- Dropout rate
- Percentage of students attending postsecondary education/military
- Making AYP
- Number of students completing dual credit/AP classes
- Percentage of students involved in extra-curricular activities
- Class projects
- Portfolios
- Successful completion of…
- Parent involvement
- Teacher-assigned grades
- Student attendance
- Other…
Some of these would seem to be more appropriate as measures of school or even district performance; others might be applicable as measures of individual performance. Most are so broadly stated that it is difficult to tell exactly what its intent was. But I would imagine that this list was generated in a single meeting with little discussion at the time, and that the committee will return to it in future meetings and chew over each item in turn. Certainly, each item is worthy of thoughtful discussion and deliberation.