Pay flexibility and public scrutiny

Forget, for a moment, the legal questions about public disclosure of charter salaries.  Richard Vinroot and Eddie Goodall,  local leaders in North Carolina's charter school movement,  have raised the argument that pay flexibility makes it essential to protect teacher salaries from disclosure  --  to their colleagues.

"Common sense suggests that we value the delicate balance by which charter operators and employees, who together, negotiate just the appropriate wage to satisfy each other,"  Goodall,  head of the N.C. Public Charter School Association,  wrote recently.  "Charters don’t mind if the public knows what everybody makes!  They only care about the third grade teacher, Tim, learning what Sally, the other third grade teacher, is making. The whole issue is about poisoning the chemistry of the charter team, adding an ingredient that might alter the flavor of the whole dish."

Vinroot contends that performance-based pay,  unlike that of teachers on a traditional salary schedule,  would cause disruption in two charter schools he works with if colleagues knew each other's pay.

Bertrand: Performance pay does create pressure ...

It's true that on the state pay scale,  you can figure out what your colleagues make if you know how many years they've worked and what kind of credentials they hold.  That locked-in schedule evolved from a time when pay discrepancies were often based on gender and race.  Some experts call it a good solution to yesterday's problems.

Charters are hardly alone in seeking better options.  The quest for a smarter teacher pay system is a national obsession,  with North Carolina and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in the thick of it.  One of the few points of near-universal agreement is this:  Done right,  performance pay doesn't just boost teachers' paychecks,  it improves the quality of teaching.

That means teachers who earn richer rewards should be doing so for reasons that people who cut the paychecks can explain.  Maybe it's because of test scores or classroom management or leadership skills.  Maybe it's because they're qualified to teach high-level math or science and it's hard to fill those jobs.  You can argue whether the standards are the right ones,  but they shouldn't be a mystery.

Those of us outside the classroom can argue theory all day long.  Reality can be a different matter.  So I asked Kristin Cubbage and Romain Bertrand,  two teachers who have been publicly identified as getting hefty raises based on their skills,  to discuss the question of working with colleagues after that disclosure.

Cubbage: Salary report didn't cause strife

Cubbage and Bertrand are part of the CMS/Project LIFT  "opportunity culture"  experiment.  Since more than 700 teachers applied for 19 jobs with greater responsibility and higher pay,  it's reasonable to suspect that some of their colleagues wanted the jobs they got.

Cubbage,  a first-grade teacher at Ashley Park PreK-8 School,  is blunt:  If it were up to her,  individual salaries, bonuses and incentive payments wouldn't be disclosed.  And when she agreed to be featured in an Observer article as one of the people receiving higher pay,  "I was a little nervous because money is a touchy subject within education."

"However, I did not feel any 'strife' at my school. In fact no one mentioned the salary portion of the article at all,"  she wrote. "I have only heard comments such as: 'I would not want your job because of all of your different responsibilities each day.'  ... If the teachers at my school are aware of the extra pay, they are also aware of what my role entails and the responsibility that what comes with it."

Bertrand,  a Ranson Middle School math teacher,  said the pressure doesn't come from the knowledge that he's making more money but from the need to prove he's earning it.  He's now responsible for six other teachers and more than 800 math students.  Not only will he be judged on year-end test scores,  but he feels a need to prove himself to his colleagues daily.

"They need to see how this position brings added value to the team: what is this person doing to make us all better?"  Bertrand wrote.  "They need to understand what they need to do to get a shot at such an opportunity in the future.  How does this ladder work?  What are the skills required to move up the ladder and be given a chance to hold such a role?  What is the equitable process in place to give everyone a chance to get there?"

Under the traditional system,  a teacher like Bertrand would have had to leave the classroom to earn a good raise.  Now he remains  "in the trenches,"  where his colleagues can judge whether his work makes a difference for kids.

When this year's CMS salaries are posted,  the additional pay for Bertrand,  Cubbage and the other opportunity culture teachers will be on display. I'll wager those schools will have bigger salary differences than charter schools do.

As the effort expands,  we'll see how other schools select and reward their high performers.  Private donations are paying for the consultants who help schools define the duties for those teachers,  and public jobs are being rearranged to cover the higher salaries.  Eventually,  the work of these individual teachers will determine whether this was just another idea that sounded good in theory or a real breakthrough in reforming the profession.

That's a lot of pressure.  But these folks are stepping up to show they can handle it.

Charter pay disclosure: Resistance continues

The state's education leaders now say charter schools,  like other public schools,  must disclose what they pay their employees.  But some leaders of the charter movement say they disagree.

Vinroot

Richard Vinroot,  a lawyer and charter pioneer who works with Sugar Creek and Lincoln charter schools,  says those schools will provide salaries to the Observer but will withhold the names of all but the highest-paid employees.  He says that's because the charter schools,  which aren't bound by the state teacher salary schedule,  pay teachers based on performance.

"I don't want Sally to know what Jimmy got paid,"  Vinroot said.  "It would create disruption within our school."

As Superintendent Heath Morrison noted when I mentioned that argument,  Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools also has a number of teachers who receive merit-based bonuses,  which we've reported every year.  It may or may not create tension among colleagues,  but it tells the public more about how those pilot systems are playing out,  at a time when performance pay is one of the biggest public policy issues in education.

Terrill

Chris Terrill, head of Pine Lake Preparatory School,  sent a salary list with all names and even specific job titles withheld.

"I believe that the data shows a high level of fiscal responsibility and a stewardship of public tax dollars.  We have tried to provide salaries that are high enough to recruit and retain an excellent faculty and staff,"  wrote Terrill, who is presumably the administrator listed at $115,360 a year.  "Pine Lake is a model for openness and transparency," he added,  citing the school's compliance with the state's Open Meetings Law.

Baker Mitchell,  a Wilmington charter school operator who serves on the N.C. Charter School Advisory Board,  has been blogging against disclosure since I raised the issue in March.

Mitchell

"Although charter schools are subjected to the same accounting standards and annual auditing that govern traditional schools, they are not required to invade the privacy of their employees by publishing their salaries,"  Mitchell wrote in March.  He contends that the tax forms filed by nonprofits provide enough information,  and noted that many other nonprofits receive public grants or subsidies without being required to disclose salaries.

This week he suggested that test scores should provide what taxpayers need to know about their investment in charter schools.

"We frequently measure costs in terms such as dollars per gallon of milk, or dollars per foot of fence,"  Mitchell writes.  "We don’t need to how much the farmer pays his helpers or how much the fence contractor pays his carpenters – we want to know the final cost of the product.  Similarly, we should ask,  'How much are we paying for each test passed by the students of a school or district?'  What is the taxpayer’s cost per successful test?  Individual salaries give no information whatsoever about how well students are being taught."

And in a comment on an Observer charter-salary story,  Mitchell noted that private vendors get public money from traditional public schools:  "Pearson, Inc. receives hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for their student testing software.  Thomas Bus Company received hundreds of millions for their school buses.  McGraw-Hill receives hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for textbooks.  Duke Power, Xerox, Apple, Microsoft, etc. all receive huge amounts of taxpayer money.  Why would invading the privacy of their workers' personal salary information help improve their products?"

Mitchell, Terrill and Vinroot are omitting a key point:  Charter schools agree to abide by the state's open meetings and public records laws when they accept the public money.  That law protects many parts of personnel files for employees of school districts,  the state,  cities and counties  --  there's no specific protection for employees of charter boards  --  but it says that names, salaries and many other specific items remain a public record.

It's possible that these folks told state officials when they accepted their charters that they'd only follow the parts of the law they agreed with,  but I doubt it.  The boom in charters means those schools are starting to get the kind of scrutiny other public schools receive,  and that can be uncomfortable.  (The Observer doesn't cover Mitchell's schools,  but his Roger Bacon Academy charter management company has faced public questions about enrollment,  personnel decisions and an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education.)