By Brad Jupp

Editor’s note: Brad Jupp, one of the chief architects of ProComp, is now senior program advisor on teacher effectiveness and quality at the U.S. Department of Education. He was asked to comment on the progress of ProComp and its impact on teacher performance pay nationally.

Over the last five years, many people have asked me whether ProComp was a success. Until the Wiley report was published, my routine answer went like this: It’s too soon to tell but when the data comes in, we should look for progress in four areas.

Brad Jupp/New York Times photo

First, you would see an increase in the number of teachers who were exceeding district expectations on the state standards test. This is a limited but interesting measure because it shows a relationship between the incentives and individual teacher outcomes.

Second and third, you would look for improvement in district-wide student performance and the number of schools exceeding district performance expectations.

Finally, you would see changes in the behaviors of teachers and principals – such as increases in the teachers applying to hard to staff/hard to serve assignments; increases in the retention of teachers in hard to staff/hard to serve assignments; shifts in teacher choices for professional development from university coursework provided by outside sources, like universities and professional development mills, to district sources, both school and district level; new collaborative focus on the rigor of student growth objectives by teachers and principals.

The Wiley report shows progress being made towards success in at least three of these four areas: an increase in the number and percentage of teachers meeting district expectations for the CSAP, overall district performance and changes in teacher behavior. The report speaks for itself so I won’t recite all of the evidence at this point.

Personally, I think the most powerful of these conclusions is on p. 20, where you can see the shift in the number of teachers exceeding expectations over time. The shift forward in that curve is something many in the education policy world have talked about in the last 10 years. Denver is accomplishing it.

It is important not to claim victory for ProComp at this moment but to note that ProComp was a part of an aggressive reform strategy that included three pillars:

• Instructional reforms – investment in the development of principals as instructional leaders, refinement of standards-based curriculum and aligned assessments, school supervision through instructional networks,
• Human capital management reforms – teacher pay and principal pay, but also teacher preparation and sourcing, teacher assignment, teacher leadership development, teacher dismissal; and,
• School performance management reforms – School Performance Framework, portfolio management of schools, etc.

This three-part agenda was what we were after when we laid its foundation in The Denver Plan. It will be impossible to parse the effects of any of these reforms because they are interlocking. It is also important not to claim victory for whole reform because Denver still has so far to go.

Nevertheless, I am encouraged by the findings of the Wiley report because it shows that we made progress during this era, and it does not indicate in any way that had we continued along the course we were on before 2005 that we would have made this progress.

This last point is important, both retrospectively and, more important, prospectively. The Wiley report does not contend that there has been a shift in the policy paradigm in Denver – but I would.

Denver now cares deeply about the measured improvement of student performance, classroom by classroom and school by school. That care is evident in a wide range of policies and a growing body of practices enacted by teachers, principals and other educators. The community wants its faculty and leadership to work with dedication and precision toward those ends.

Had the Wiley report been less optimistic, the right response would not have been to return to the single salary schedule because that is the best way to drive improvements in student learning or to pay teachers. It would have been to go back to the drawing board and re-tune ProComp so that it would get better results.

And, in fact, that is how we should approach the further refinement of ProComp as well as the other aligned reforms I outlined above, especially because we still have such a long way to go in Denver.

Since the DPS and DCTA entered into the Pay for Performance Pilot in 1999, which led to ProComp, I have seen three major trends in the national teacher pay policy landscape.

First, the number of school districts that have entered into alternative compensation efforts has increased from a handful to hundreds. Second, in the hundreds of school districts that have entered into these alternative compensation systems, people’s worst fears have not come true. There has not been rampant cheating by teachers or students, teachers have not radically altered their collegial behavior, school districts have not become arbitrary and capricious employers, etc.

Likewise, pay reforms have not proven to be the silver bullet that no one in their right mind would have claimed them to be. They have not magically transformed the results we were getting students. If the hundreds of districts working on teacher compensation reform have proven anything, it is that A) pay reform should be part of a broader set of reforms and that B) driving improvement in student performance is really hard work.

Third, there are still thousands of school districts that have not yet engaged in compensation reform or the broader body of reforms that Denver has entered into. There is no evidence that clinging to an older policy framework will improve student performance or close achievement gaps. There is, therefore, much work to be done to change the policy orientation in these remaining districts.

Denver – the district and the union – has taken great strides with much accomplishment and relatively minimal conflict. I would hope that school systems and teacher unions could learn from this.

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