In 2005, Minnesota passed the Quality Compensation law (known as Q Comp), an optional statewide program that provides additional funding to districts or public charter schools to support them in designing alternative teacher compensation and professional development systems. While there is evidence that Q Comp has had a positive impact on student outcomes, there is still room to strengthen it.
As teachers, we feel it is our duty to reflect upon and study ways to improve our practice to better drive student achievement. This is what sparked our interest in Q Comp, since the program includes money for job-embedded professional development, encourages time for collaboration and offers a system of supports for teachers to improve their craft. It also financially rewards teachers who meet locally determined goals. We support these ideas in principle, but wanted to look at the evidence about Q Comp—both what teachers thought of the program and what the research showed.
Recommendations:
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Develop career ladders with hybrid teacher-leader roles for effective teachers and monitor the impact of leadership roles;
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Implement ongoing, job-embedded professional development aligned with teacher evaluation data.
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Implement a multi-measured teacher evaluation system that leverages human capital to attract and retain top teacher talent.
- Align alternate salary schedules and performance pay measures, create incentives for effective teachers at hard-to-staff schools and provide additional compensation for effective and highly effective teachers.
About the Teacher Action Team
We are a team of 14 educators who met over the course of eight weeks to review research on compensation, teacher evaluation, and career ladder programs across the nation. We conducted interviews with district leaders, colleagues, and Minnesota Department of Education staff to gather critical information about current practices and stakeholder feedback. We also conducted focus groups and surveyed colleagues to develop the team’s final recommendations.