Frisco ISD considers teacher incentive allotment
AP Seminar students are wrapping up the school year by reaching out to academic scholars that may have made a significant contribution to students’ research topic. The foundation of the AP Seminar course is research, and this provides an opportunity to thank the researchers referenced in their projects.
March 5, 2020
Already raising the starting teaching salary to $54,000 for the 2019-2020 school year, Frisco ISD is considering implementing an incentive based system that is an optional component of House Bill 3, which allows districts to offer a state stipend to teachers who reach certain designations as defined by the Texas Education Agency.
Hoping this will help keep the best teachers in Frisco, district superintendent Mike Waldrip spoke about the possible program at January’s board meeting.
“We feel like it’s probably something that we need to do as a school district because we don’t want to lose competitive advantage,” Waldrip said. “I’m not a particular fan of us using STAAR for this because we actually have some areas that don’t qualify for STAAR. We want something that every teacher in the school district can qualify for.”
With the district offering more than 100 courses, physics teacher Kenric Davies sees a such a system being difficult to implement.
“I think it’d be pretty tough to do that,” Davies said. “Because not all teachers teach the same thing. They don’t teach the same level of students. I think it’d be a little tough to compare an AP physics class to an AP government class. It’s just that it may still be AP level, but they’re not the same content.”
English teacher Chad Doty hopes to see a stipend system that goes far beyond test scores for evaluation.
“I like the idea of the district rewarding what they believe is good teaching but I think it really might be biased towards those who teach upper-level classes,” Doty said. “I’m just imagining a teacher who teaches an on-level course, versus one who teaches all pre-AP. If we’re just looking at STAAR scores then I feel like the one who teaches pre-AP might be in a situation to earn that bonus, and the on-level teacher might not be, just based on the students they have. I don’t think that actually reflects well on how good that teacher might be. I think some system of an appraiser evaluation or portfolio sounds more appealing to me. I think that would be a fairer form of evaluation.”
Update: This story was updated on March 6 to change the wording from a merit based pay system to an incentive allotment system.
