Schools to pay best teachers more, faster with Gates grant

By 2013, teachers will be known as "apprentices'' during their first three years with Hillsborough County Public Schools.

They'll still be able to reach tenure in their fourth year, but they won't have to put in 27 years with the district or earn a master's degree to reach the top of their earning potential.

And they won't have to leave the classroom to make more money.

It's all part of a new seven-year plan to put more effective teachers in the classroom and dramatically increase the number of high school graduates.

Hillsborough had a graduation rate of 82.2 percent last year. Statewide, the rate stands at about 76 percent.

"Together we can help everybody get to a better place where the bottom line is: What can we do to affect student achievement?" Superintendent MaryEllen Elia said today during a school board workshop.

Elia and other administrators unveiled a roadmap for changes planned through a $100 million grant the district was awarded in November by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

By next school year, expect to see:

• A corps of about 200 mentors - the district's best and brightest educators - monitoring beginning teachers in the classroom for up to two years and helping them become better instructors.

• New teacher evaluations that will increase expectations and equally weigh comments from principals and mentors while reducing emphasis on student achievement, dropping that factor from 60 percent to 40 percent.

• An online process that allows the district to track its performance and develop measures that could one day form a nationwide model to improve public school education.

Other initiatives include overhauling instructional tools like teacher lesson plans, hiring human resources liaisons to work directly with principals to replace teachers, and ensuring the best teachers are recruited.

The district may also expand its Renaissance program, which provides bonuses and other incentives for teachers and principals who work in schools with high-needs students.

By the end of the seven years, administrators hope to accomplish big changes, especially in their teacher pay-for-performance program. The district hopes to build on the state's current Merit Award Program, known as MAP.

Currently, performance levels are tied to a year's worth of student gains. The new program, which still must be negotiated with the teacher's union, would stretch that time period to three years, which is more valid and balanced, administrators and teachers' representatives say.

"We're so ready to move into the next generation for pay-for-performance," said Jean Clements, president of the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association. Under the new plan, teachers can "make a lot more money a lot more quickly."

Veteran teachers will have the option to participate in the new pay schedule or remain with the existing one.

Gates foundation representatives complimented the district's plan in awarding Hillsborough the biggest private grant ever given to a public school district.

Florida is one of the first states to adopt a state-created pay-for-performance program and Hillsborough earned praise for its "stable leadership" and "robust data system" from Ky Vu, a program officer for the foundation's education department.

The Gates foundation spent a year surveying 16,500 school districts and 3,000-plus charter schools before settling on 20 and whittling that list to four winners, including Hillsborough.

The district's high number of low-income students, the state's favorable tenure laws and its ability to link teacher evaluations with student achievement all worked to Hillsborough's advantage.

"The best we could show was Hillsborough County," said Don Shalvey, the foundation's senior program officer, a former school superintendent and a three-time recipient of Gates grants.

But the praise came with cautions.

Failure to stay the course, an uncertain political climate and loss of early public support could put the plan at risk, the Gates' representatives said.

School board member Jennifer Faliero said she is also shares concerns from some constituents about sustaining the plan once the grant ends.

It will cost the district an estimated $32.5 million - money, Elia said, that will come from savings realized by implementing the plan.

Some dollars will come from staff development funds, others from money saved by retaining teachers.