Differentiated Compensation & Career Pathways

We intend to create new promotional opportunities for teachers, and to articulate a set of career pathways for all educators:

• Teacher leadership roles:  We intend to develop and codify a set of additional positions and/or roles that provide significant promotional opportunities for effective teachers to remain in the classroom part of the time, while bringing their expertise to other teachers at their schools and/or throughout the District. Possibilities include roles such as Teacher Leaders for facilitating the Individual Growth Planning process, and Teachers Leaders who perform Observations of Teacher Practice. With additional responsibilities and time commitments, such roles would come with enhanced compensation.
• Developing career pathways for all educators:  We intend to review and realign existing professional development offerings and career opportunities for consistency with the Teaching & Learning Framework, the School Leadership Framework, and the LAUSD instructional philosophy (RTI²). We will articulate a set of career pathways in such areas as content expertise, classroom management, teacher leadership, school leadership and the like such that after completing the induction phase of their respective positions, all teachers and school leaders will eventually be enrolled in a defined career pathway. Lifelong educators will complete multiple pathways throughout their careers.

In addition to teacher leader roles, we are exploring other ways of better aligning compensation practices with our goals for students:

• Professional development incentives: Where appropriate, we intend to seek to realign existing incentives for professional development to be consistent with the Teaching & Learning Framework, the School Leadership Framework, and the LAUSD instructional philosophy (RTI²).
• Incentives for high needs positions & the Talent Sharing Initiative: We are participating in the Talent Sharing Initiative, a national research project (funded by the US Department of Education) that measures the impact of offering effective teachers financial incentives to teach in high needs schools. This fall, eight teachers are participating in this initiative, and by Fall 2013, we will learn about the efficacy of this type of approach. We may elect to expand these efforts during the piloting phase of this initiative.
• Rewards for excellence voluntary pilot: We seek to develop and implement a voluntary research pilot in LAUSD to understand the efficacy of directly rewarding educators for achieving significant improvements in student learning outcomes.