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Teacher bonuses paid by taxpayers for the first time this year

The city is set to award millions of dollars in bonuses to teachers and principals at high-performing schools tomorrow, using public funds for the first time in a year when schools have faced deep cuts.

The city would not disclose today how much money would be awarded tomorrow. But last year, the bonuses for elementary and middle school teachers amounted to nearly $20 million. (Nearly $8 million went to high school principals and teachers after high school progress reports were released.) About $5.5 million went to administrators whose schools scored in the top 20 percent on the progress reports. The rest of the money, $14.2 million, went to 89 of the schools participating in a separate bonus program in which a team of teachers and administrators decides how to mete out the extra money at each school.

Last year, the $14.2 million tab for the school-wide bonus program was paid by a host of private donors, including the Broad Foundation and the Partnership for the City of New York, and the plan was for taxpayers to begin footing the bill this year. A Department of Education spokeswoman, Ann Forte, confirmed today that the plan had not changed. The bonus program for principals used public dollars last year.

A principal we spoke to today whose school landed solidly in the top 20 percent of all scorers, for the third year in a row, said she hadn’t yet heard whether she would be receiving a bonus or how much this year’s bonuses would be.

Under budget pressure last year, the city scrapped a separate program that would have awarded an extra $30 per student to schools that earned both an A on their progress reports and a “well developed” on their quality reviews. Had that program been up and running this year, the city would be on the hook for more than $9.3 million in bonuses.

  • Michael M.

    Bonuses based on a random letter generator. What exactly are they incentivizing: playing the ponies? Sheesh.

  • .sharese

    Why there isn’t any talk about the hiring freeze in the Doe: new teachers, social workers, school physicologist, etc. Doesn’t anyone care about it, or is it just a few?

  • http://www.specialeducationmuckraker.com Dee Alpert

    Last time I saw it, the formula for principals’ bonuses for the District 75 special ed schools was based solely on things principals – in their sole discretion, or abuse of discretion – reported. Not one scintilla of data re scores, objective outcomes such as graduation, dropout and “discharge” rates, was in there.

    Well, hey! It’s only 23,000 kids and it’s only a reported $55,000 per kid per year spent by the NYC DOE in D. 75. What did you expect? Accountability?

    Oh, I forgot. There are no progress reports for D. 75 schools, either. Still “under development.” So what you get for the money is … ? And since the NYC DOE and D. 75 still refuse to make public the entire data set for the many D. 75 schools which enroll high school-age kids … .

    You can tell a lot, they say, about a civilization by the way it treats its most powerless citizens. You can tell a lot about the NYCDOE by the way it accounts for its most powerless children. Or should I say “Not!” Because there’s no real accounting for them, or accountability for their outcomes, in this best-of-all-possible public education systems.

    Since the NYCDOE keeps most of the objective data about these kids secret, maybe we should all just insist that if they won’t make it public, nobody in D. 75 should get a bonus – and perhaps nobody in D. 75 should get a salary at all. Who knows? Maybe most of these kids really … just aren’t there?

  • Pogue

    No bonuses. Teachers and principals want to help children because we care and simply, it’s our job, period. We don’t need incentives to help kids. Take that money and buy musical instruments, sports equipment, and any other educational accessories that DON’T have to do with tests.

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