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(GSCS Note: GSCS supports merit pay for Chief School Administrators)...Times of Trenton - Despite salary cap, school districts can use state-authorized merit bonuses to try and retain superintendents
NJ Spotlight - At First Anniversary, NJ’s Teacher-Tenure Law Faces Biggest Tests…Full-scale deployment slated for September, bill's author remains focused on coming challenges.
Times of Trenton - Despite salary cap, school districts can use state-authorized merit bonuses to try and retain superintendents
By Christina Izzo The Times, n August 11, 2013 at 7:25 AM, updated August 11, 2013 at 7:27 AM
The bonus system was put in place, but not a lot of thought and consideration went into this.
HOPEWELL - School boards in New Jersey that are trying to retain and hire superintendents despite the state’s two-year-old system of salary caps increasingly have been using a little known tool: state-authorized bonuses that can add tens of thousands of dollars to a high-paid school executive’s annual earnings.
In the Hopewell Valley regional district, for example, the bonuses may have been a factor in Superintendent Thomas Smith’s recent decision to renew his contract for another five years despite having to take a $14,500 salary cut under the caps, from about $182,000 to $167,500.
Smith said he will apply for merit bonuses which, if he meets a series of five goals, could bring him up to $25,125, or about 15 percent of his reduced salary, more than making up for the pay cut.
Defenders of the bonuses say that by tying compensation directly to student achievement and other important measures, they motivate top administrators to work harder to boost their districts.
“Merit bonuses can help school boards and superintendents achieve very specific, predetermined goals,” said Michael Yaple, a spokesman for the state Department of Education. “It can be a tool to place the focus on results and outcomes that, in the end, benefit the students in the school district.”
But the bonus system, which went into effect in 2011 as part of the salary cap rule laid down by Gov. Chris Christie, is not without its critics.
Donna Chiera, the president of the American Federation of Teachers New Jersey, a teachers union, said districts quickly realized they could simply use bonuses to effectively undo the pay limits instituted by the state.
“The state of New Jersey put on a cap and people very quickly figured out how they can pay superintendents more,” she said. “The bonus system was put in place, but not a lot of thought and consideration went into this.”
GOOD IN THEORY
Merit bonuses are a good idea in theory, but the program was not perfected before it was put into place, she said.
Christie announced salary caps tied to enrollment levels in 2010, saying they would reduce salaries for 360 school executives by $9.8 million and save districts money. He also introduced the performance bonuses in an effort to entice superintendents to try harder to boost student achievement.
Each year a district is allowed to set five goals for a superintendent: three measurable “quantitative” goals, such as improvements in test scores, and two “qualitative” goals such as improvements in district communication and practices.
A superintendent who meets a quantitative goal may earn a bonus of up to 3.33 percent of his or her base salary, while meeting a qualitative goal brings a bonus of up to 2.5 percent. A superintendent who meets five goals may earn bonuses worth a total of nearly 15 percent of their salary. The goals are set by the district school board and have to be approved by the county superintendent.
The New Jersey School Boards Association, which works to help boards find superintendents and set salaries, supports the use of merit-based bonuses, Deputy Executive Director Frank Belluscio said.
“It’s a sound practice and a critical part of evaluating the superintendent’s performance,” he said.
Belluscio said the bonuses are working and are used by most districts, though they have not been embraced everywhere.
“In the northern part of the state, it appears that most superintendent contracts include clauses stating that the merit goals may be set for the superintendent. Then, the board and superintendent decide each year on the number of goals,” he said. “In the southern part of the state, merit goals are less common.”
Belluscio also said superintendent salaries are generally higher in northern districts than in southern, but it is not clear why bonuses are used more in some parts of the state. He noted that new superintendents usually do not try to meet goals for bonuses in their first year.
At the same time, the bonus program has some inherent problems, Chiera said. One issue is that it can be difficult to determine if a superintendent is doing exceptionally well, or just doing his or her job.
“Merit pay is to reward people for going above and beyond expectations,” she said. “To me, it is the superintendent’s job to create policies where student achievements go up and to create a safe and healthy environment. At what level do you say, you went above and beyond?”
ACCOUNTABILITY CONCERNS
The program also raises concerns about accountability and transparency in a district and its school board, Chiera said.
She described a situation in Perth Amboy where a merit goal was set to lower the suspension rate, but the school board gave sole power to the superintendent to grant suspensions. As a result the superintendent was granted a merit bonus for simply adjusting a factor he had the power to control, without necessarily actually changing student behavior, she said.
“They gave the fox the key to the chicken coop,” Chiera said.
Similarly, tying pay to test scores could create pressure for a district to improperly adjust test scores or otherwise cut corners, she said. Even legitimate improvements may be only temporary, helping a superintendent meet one year’s goal but then not being maintained in successive years, she said.
Even with the bonuses, many districts have been unable to keep their superintendents since the salary caps went into effect.
Nearly a third of the state’s districts changed superintendents in the first year of the caps, the highest turnover rate in at least 12 years, according to the NJSBA.
Locally, Princeton Superintendent Judith Wilson announced in March that she will retire in December rather than take a $57,000 pay cut when her contract expires next year.
She earns $225,000. West Windsor-Plainsboro Superintendent Victoria Kniewel, who is paid $192,676, said in April that she would take a job in New York to avoid seeing her salary drop by $17,000.
Wilson would have been able to receive up to $25,200 in bonuses a year if she had stayed and met all five goals, while Kniewel could have received up to $26,351.
Contact Christina Izzo at cizzo@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5688.
NJ Spotlight - At First Anniversary, NJ’s Teacher-Tenure Law Faces Biggest Tests…Full-scale deployment slated for September, bill's author remains focused on coming challenges.
John Mooney | August 9, 2013
The state senator who wrote and shepherded through New Jersey’s new teacher tenure law remembers well the day a year ago when it was signed into law by Gov. Chris Christie -- including that it was an August scorcher.
With the law’s first anniversary this week, state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex) said she also knows now that it remains an unfinished job.
“New Jersey should be very proud of what it accomplished,” Ruiz said yesterday. “But we can’t stop there. It is one small step, and there are other things we need to talk about, so many other things that are needed to ensure a child’s academic success.”
Ruiz’s Teacher Effectiveness and Accountability for the Children of New Jersey Act (TEACHNJ) has transformed teacher evaluation, instituting new requirements on how and when teachers are assessed and laying out a system of grades that can grant them tenure -- or potentially remove them.
The law goes into full effect with the start of the school year next month. At that point, every district in the state is required to have in place a teacher evaluation system that will grade educators on a scale from “ineffective to “highly effective.”
In the meantime, nearly 30 cases have already been decided by the arbitration system set up by the law, the latest coming down this week against a Cumberland County vocational high school teacher accused of shoving a student.
Ruiz said yesterday that she continues to hear from constituents and others about TEACHNJ as it starts to take hold in the state.
She also has been caught up in some of the minutia, including discussions in the spring about how heavily test scores would be weighted in the evaluation process, by far the most contentious aspect of the law.
Other lawmakers have asked that she extend the deadlines for the evaluation system, something she has thus far refused to do.
Since the law’s signing in a Middlesex school, Ruiz has realized that TEACHNJ is a work in progress. There will be a great deal to learn in the coming months as districts begin to roll out their evaluation systems, she said.
“Legislation is written for the moment,” Ruiz said yesterday. “We just opened up a 100-year-old law and statute and changed how things were done. But we know there is always room for improvement.”
When asked if she had second thoughts about any of the language of the law or its requirements, she said not at this point.
There have been debates about how certain pieces of the legislation are to be interpreted, including one line that says test scores would not be a “predominant” factor in judging teachers. But Ruiz said the law was never meant to prescribe just one way for all districts all the time.
“I never wanted to get into the weeds of it,” she said. “What we use today [in judging teachers] is not necessarily what we will use in five, 10, 15 years, and I always felt it should be a dynamic process. But did we also want protections? Yes, and I think there are protections.”
One thing the senator said she is not giving up on is finding state funding to help districts implement the law, which explicitly calls for state resources. Nonetheless, Christie and the Legislature did not include any additional funding in this year’s budget. Ruiz said maybe some help could be provided through a grant program or on a case-by-case basis.
“I will always push for opportunities to find resources for districts,” she said.
Ruiz also said there is likely to be further legislation in the coming year about other important aspects of teacher quality, including education and preparation.
“We are really early in that,” she said. “There are a lot of moving pieces, and we want to make sure we do it properly.”
She said one thing that the tenure law taught her was the value of bringing various parties together to reach consensus, even if it takes a few years.
“It certainly didn’t start like that at the beginning, not at all,” she said of the process. “But I learned you need to bring everyone to the table.”
