Cook County Schools’ implementation of Q-Comp, a state-initiated program that compensates teachers and districts for meeting quality goals, is official. The final plan that was approved by the state was approved by the local teacher’s union, the Cook County Education Association, and finally by the school board on September 20, 2012.
Incentive pay will be based on school-wide goals for student achievement, individual teacher goals for student achievement, and proficiency evaluations. This year’s school-wide goals will focus on improving math proficiency.
Teachers doing classroom observations of their peers will be trained to follow a rubric outlining specifically what they should be looking for in order to ensure inter-rater reliability. Even the peer evaluators will be evaluated.
“There [will be] a lot more people in your classroom watching you teach,” elementary teacher Betsy Jorgenson said. “We’re not providing a one-size-fits-all education.”
Jorgenson said Q-Comp will help teachers teach to individual student needs. They will be evaluated on how they manage procedures and behavior in the classroom and on whether they communicate clearly and accurately, use effective questioning and discussion techniques, and demonstrate flexibility and responsiveness to students.
School board member Terry Collins said tenured teachers will go from having one evaluation every other year to having five a year—one administrator evaluation, two peer evaluations, and two self-evaluations.
Before Q-Comp, teachers would get pay raises for years of experience and amount of education. Now, they will need to prove that they are proficient at their jobs in order to get pay raises for each additional year of experience. The ISD 166 pay scale goes from $35,128 for a beginning teacher with a bachelor’s degree to $65,400 for a teacher with a master’s degree and at least 20 extra semester credits.
The extra money teachers will be able to earn will not enable them to buy a new house, or maybe not even a new fridge, Jorgenson said, but it’s an incentive. “Education is evolving,” she said. “The structure of education has to evolve as well.”
The school district will earn an additional $78,000 from the state if all its Q-Comp goals are met. The district will need to re-apply for Q-Comp funding each year. By law, it could generate the incentive pay from local tax levies but will not be doing that this year.
Collins suggested that they consider adding days back into Superintendent Beth Schwarz’s contract to reflect the work she will end up doing to implement the program. Later in the meeting, Schwarz told the board that because her contract had been reduced to 240 workdays a year, she would be doing some consulting work on the side. She asked if they had a problem with that, and none of the board members objected.
School board member Jeanne Anderson agreed to be a liaison with the Q-Comp committee. She will receive $500 in compensation for this.
“The grant committee that put this plan together pulsated with positive energy,” said school board member Deb White.
Math improvement strategy
With the district’s standardized test scores at unacceptably low levels this last year, administration and faculty have been creating a strategy for improvement. In a written report to the board, Principal Gwen Carman said, “We know that we must improve our students’ math achievement levels. We know that we must incorporate multiple strategies to accomplish this. This will be a major focus throughout 2012-13 but also for the next several years.”
Carman said she met with teachers who teach math regularly (“core” math teachers). “We discussed the importance of growth in this area and I emphasized that no one person is to ‘blame’ and no one person can make it better,” she said. “We all have to work together. I emphasized that we have to all look at what we can [do] differently and better.”
Carman said the Q-Comp plan would help assure that all subject areas integrate math skills, concepts, and vocabulary into their curricula.
The Minnesota Department of Education has required the district to create a school improvement plan that includes a needs assessment, goals, interventions laid out in action steps, an outline of anticipated outcomes, and professional development.
The school has invested in a process involving frequent testing to identify exactly what individual students have and have not yet mastered. “We are putting even greater emphasis on assessing where student gaps in skills or knowledge are and identifying strategies for filling those gaps,” Carman wrote in regard to this process. “Students must master basic facts with automaticity while also developing independent problem solving skills to work through mathematical problems. Both are critical to success!
“…Our Math Curriculum Committee will be heavily scrutinizing, reviewing, and researching our current math curriculums and assessing if alternative curriculums would be more effective,” Carman wrote.
The district has also set aside more teacher in-service days this year. “I am very glad that we will have increased amounts of time for staff to meet and work through this process,” Carman wrote.
Preliminary levy
The board set its preliminary levy at $947,256.34, the maximum allowed. This amount could be reduced by the time the final levy is set in December. It represents a 2¼ percent increase over last year’s levy.
Superintendent Schwarz said ISD 166 gets very little state aid compared to many other counties because of the high value of its private property – currently $1.685 billion.
Staff changes
Early childhood special education teacher Kassi Felts resigned because she will be moving out of the area with her husband, who got a promotion with the U.S. Forest Service. Paraprofessional Kristen Bockovich resigned to take a teaching position in Walker, Minnesota.
The board approved hiring five paraprofessionals – Judy Schmidt, preschool; Angela Plummer, Kari Benedix, and Deidra Reiter, elementary school; and Ann Sullivan, middle school. Seven paras have resigned since April, but the district has only replaced the full-time equivalent of about six of them.
Enrollment up
The district had projected 455 students for this year, but as of September 16 470 students were enrolled.
Recent donations of $1,000 or more to the school district include the following:
. $1,000 from St. John’s Catholic Church for activity fee scholarships;
. $1,000 from North Shore Collaborative for Climb Theater;
. $1,200 from the Cook County Education Foundation for science DVDs;
. $1,465 from the Target Take Charge program;
. $2,142 from volunteer work performed by Sally Berg and Linda and Gene Arnold at First and Second Thrift Store;
. $3,500 from Arrowhead Electric Cooperative Inc. for the robotics program;
. $5,000 from Dave Stuart for English, social studies, or industrial technology.
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