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January 20, 2011

City awards bonuses to fewer schools after test scores drop

by Anna Phillips, at 6:15 pm

The number of city schools whose teachers are taking home bonuses fell to just 26 this year, with many past winners falling victim to the citywide decline in test scores.

About 200 schools with many high-needs students are eligible for annual bonuses if their progress report scores increase sufficiently. Schools meeting their target score increase receive up to $3,000 per teachers union member, which a team of teachers and administrators decide how to distribute.

In 2009, when progress report scores skyrocketed, teachers at 139 elementary and middle schools — 91 percent of those eligible — took home $27.1 million in bonuses. Staff at 20 high schools were awarded bonuses of $3.5 million.

But after last year’s precipitous test score drop, the total number of schools earning the latest round of bonuses is just 26, Department of Education Officials announced today. The awards range from $48,000 to teachers at the tiny High School for Violin and Dance in the Bronx to more than half a million dollars for staff at PS 77, a Brooklyn school for severely disabled students.

The city did not announce which principals would take home performance bonuses, but the bonus program for principals has in the past awarded up to $25,000 to principals whose schools ranked in the top 20 percent citywide.

Developed in 2007 by the teachers union and the city, the annual school-wide bonuses were initially funded with private dollars, but since 2009 have been paid for with public funds.

The complete list of schools receiving bonuses this year, and the amount of money their teachers will be taking home, is below.

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  • Michael M.

    If I recommend more stringent tests, can I have a split of all the bonus money about to be saved?

    If I get caught doing anything wrong to jack up my school’s scores…. can I keep the money?

  • http://www.classsizematters.org leonie haimson

    Still an enormous waste of money for a program that has shown itself to be based upon unreliable measures have no value and be based on unreliable measures. Anyone notice that they gave bonuses to Maxwell which they tried to close last year?

  • Michael M.

    The school with the single biggest award pot was 75K077, at $574,595. Per DOE website, 281 kids, K-12. No typical School Progress Report available.

    That’s a bonus of $2,044.82 per student. I have no idea how much per teacher, but if such is capped at $3,000 per teacher, that suggests one heckuva student-teacher ratio. Someone please help me out here.

    The school with the second biggest pot was 06M153, at $306,000. Per DOE website, 1042 kids, Pre-K to 5th.

    That’s $293.67 per kid. Say 25 kids per class. Say $7,341 per teacher? Can’t be. Capped at $3,000 per teacher. Again, someone please help me out here.

    Per the 2009-2010 School Progress Report, the median ELA and math scores were below the city average. In the case of Math, well below, say bottom 25%.

    But thanks to the ever-morphing magic of the “progress formula,” because this school percentile growth was in the top 25% (both peer and citywide); and because of 9 additional credit points (worth nearly as much as the 13 performance points left on the table), this school’s teachers are getting bonuses.

    But some hypothetical school perhaps with better performance, albeit a lower progress percentile got NO bonus? Even with comparable “bonus” points for helping the most deserving? I’m having a hard time developing any instinct for the equity here.

    Lest no one misunderstand: I love teachers. I do not approve of Tweed’s random letter generators, nor by extension, random bonus generators. The bonuses buy silence. Hey, who wouldn’t want to win the lottery?

  • http://deleted i think

    I think the bonuses are calculated by “uft member” and not just teachers.  So a school with a high special education population, with a bunch of paras might have a higher number.  

  • Bronxactivist

    Merit pay at its best. This is what Bloomberg wants and unfortunately the UFT leadership went along with it. Once again this makes teacher look as we are greedy. If merit pay was such a motivated do you not think more schools would have reached their goal of raising the test scores. We all know from education research that extrinsic rewards do not work unless administered correctly and for the right reasons. Intrinsic rewards which is suppoused to be what teaching is about is why teachers keep teaching in bad work conditions.

  • Michael M.

    … even so, that’s still $2,044.82 per student. Would those “uft members” have performed differently at half the bonus, and freed up another $2M?

    For a real twist, ponder how many of those who got bonuses — for LAST year’s scores — might be at risk in the contested “value-added” data — based on PRIOR year’s scores?

  • Michael M.

    BA,

    But it’s NOT merit pay. Not when the basis is cooked.

    In the private sector, do people get bonuses when they do better than last year, but competitors are still outperforming them? Performance vs. “Progress.”

    e.g.
    Home run bonuses.

    This year…
    Player A hit 50.
    Player B hit 20.

    But last year…
    Player A hit 60.
    Player B hit 19.

    Guess which one gets the bonus under this system?

    Now… what if I told you they moved the fences back for this year?

    Now… what if I told you that Player B could have hit 25 had he seen this coming and moved to Denver?

  • Empire of Illusion

    Cathie Black on Inside City Hall tonight…”principals have their own ecosystems, they know who the good teachers are.”
    Yeah, sure, she meant only the teachers in the principals’ loop!…and closet Walcott aiding and abetting her misinformed self. Walcott claims ATR’s who didn’t apply for positions on open market are “unacceptable,” while not stating the intended mission of school principals was not wanting to hire them. What a joke.

  • Mustafa

    Heh, Maxwell gets a bonus two years in a row. Last year the DOE tried to close them.

  • Empire of Illusion

    Let’s ask McGuire or Bonds…wasn’t their steroidal abuse value-added in any ballpark?

  • Michael M.

    Homers per dollar? Juicers with tenure?

  • Bronxactivist

    The only difference is that if you do not perform the fans will turn on you and your own teamates will turn on you. Poor performing teachers barely last because the students parents, fellow teachers and the administration will run you out. However if these people last it is because of lazy administrators not willing to put it the work. Administrators are not psychics and can just tell what a good teacher looks like or not. Test scores that do not even test content knowledge are bad indicators of performance such as the state test in all areas. Administrators run out good teachers that parents and students know they are good teachers. All it takes is a “u” rating and write ups. I have seen so many teachers resigning because of bad principals with no ethics or moral backbone. If teachers report cheating, stealing scandals believe me that the teacher will be gone before the principal is ever even investigated.

  • John

    Three Comments:

    #1. My favorite part of the bonuses is that they are in part determined by school surveys which teacher fill out. My survey always reflected my desire for $3000.
    __________________________________________

    #2. It would be incredibly easy to judge the programs effectiveness in NYC, but to my knowledge it has never been done.

    Randomly select two groups of schools that were eligible to participate in the program this year. Tell first half that they will be eligible for bonuses again next year based on meeting the same criteria. Tell the second half they will not be eligible for bonuses next year. Measure both groups based on the same bonus criteria and see if the bonus eligible schools out perform the others.

    Data collection people!

    If this has not been done, there must be serious questions of competency raised about Shael Polakow-Suransky’s office of performance and accountability.

    ____________________________________________

    #3 In times of budget problems I think everyone agrees that bonuses should be cut first. I hope Cathie Black wisely stops this program and uses the money to save teacher’s jobs, which in turn lowers class sizes.

  • Roma Giudetti

    Speaking of progress reports and testing, the English Regents came with no conversion charts so we were unable to tell the kids if they passed.  We graded the M/C part, the paragraphs, and the essay and then they were sent to the state.  My colleagues and I surmise that the state will look at all the raw scores and then set an arbitrary cut off wherever it best suits them to make it look like scores have gone up.  A second comment on the English Regents, my third grader could have passed them.  The grading rubric was pathetic.  The child had to be completely incoherent to be given a failing grade on the two writing pieces.  

  • Mama Bear

    Then shouldn’t those at DOE also get fewer bonuses? Is that too logical?

  • Bronxactivist

    Get rid of bonuses all together. See how many of the private sector programs do not really work in the public sector.

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