MUSD retains effective teacher pay model

The Maricopa Unified School District Governing Board approved the district’s 2021-22 Proposition 301 Pay for Performance Compensation Plan Wednesday, a move that will put $4,300 in the pockets of “top” teachers at the end of the school year.

Teachers at all MUSD schools are evaluated by principals and other administrators using the Danielson Framework for Teaching, a rubric designed to evaluate the effectiveness of teachers in the classroom.

There are four tiers in the evaluation. Teachers are rated as highly proficient, proficient, partially proficient, or ineffective.

“It’s very objective,” Director of Human Resources Tom Beckett said. “There’s a rubric involved in the evaluation, and these principals practice going into the classrooms and evaluating the teachers. It’s observational, to see how the teachers are actually performing.”

The Danielson method evaluates teachers in four categories – planning and preparation, classroom environment, instruction, and professional responsibilities. Several elements are evaluated within each of the categories.

Beckett said the bonuses are determined by the observations of the administrator designated to evaluate each particular teacher. Highly effective and effective teachers get the full potential bonus of $4,300; those ranked as partially effective get 75% of the bonus, or $3,225. Ineffective teachers get no additional compensation.

In 2020-21, because COVID made the evaluations so difficult, every teacher received a payout of $3,000.

In the pre-pandemic 2019-20 school year, Beckett said the district had 390 employees qualify for the pay-out. Of those, 379 received a 100% payment and 11 received 75%.

Beckett believes the program is one factor in MUSD attracting and retaining quality teachers.

“It can’t hurt,” he said. “In Arizona we rank, what, 48^th in the nation in teacher salaries? So, anything that that helps, that is great. Last year, the full bonus was $3,000, so we’ve had a significant bump in the funds available, and we were really excited about that. It’s a nice carrot for our teachers.”

The district’s business director, Jacob Harmon, explained the source of the state’s Classroom Site Fund.

“Back in 2001, Proposition 301 created a 6% state sales excise tax, so a portion of the funding comes from that tax,” Harmon said. “Another portion comes from the sale of state trust lands. So, there’s a big pot of money and they distribute it to schools based on…weighted student counts, and we get an allocation.”

MUSD developed its performance-based plan to meet the requirements set forth by the Arizona Legislature and by the Arizona Department of Education for awarding the funds to teachers. In a Sept. 3-9 vote of the district’s teachers, the performance plan was approved by 97% of MUSD teachers, far exceeding the required 70% prescribed by the state.