Leveraging capitalism
This is a good concept.
A Proposal for Incentive Pay at Low-Performing Schools
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
The president of the city teachers' union yesterday proposed a 15 percent salary incentive for teachers willing to work in the city's 200 lowest-performing schools. But she said the differential must be tied to across-the-board raises to make teachers' pay more competitive with that of the suburbs and the private sector.
In a speech at her union's spring conference at the New York Hilton in Midtown, Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, outlined the plan as part of an intensive push to turn around failing schools in impoverished neighborhoods. It would include smaller classes, a longer school day and an array of health and social services.
Ms. Weingarten said the city could pay for the program, which she called a School Enterprise Zone of the 200 failing schools, and for the salary increases using $1.5 billion of the additional state money that is expected as a result of a court decision last year ordering Albany to increase aid to New York City schools.
She said the differential should apply not just to teachers but to all personnel, including secretaries and aides, "to encourage and reward those who volunteer to take on the toughest assignments and work in our hardest-to-staff schools."
"With such an incentive," Ms. Weingarten said, "those schools can establish the most rigorous qualifications for experience and expertise and staff their classrooms with teachers who are not only highly qualified, but also want to be there."
