Meriting
Attention: A comparison of average merit-pay increases
given to Portland principals in 1999
At the end of the last school year, Portland Public Schools
adopted a radically new pay plan for principals, rewarding
them for performance. School board members hailed the
step as a much-needed shift away from the traditional
seniority-based pay system.
But a Willamette Week analysis of the program's
first-year results reveals a number of unintended consequences
of performance pay, consequences that threaten the relationship
between the district and some of its most embattled
principals.
WW found that among principals receiving performance
pay:
* Principals at schools with high levels of poverty
got paid less than those at affluent schools.
* Eastside principals on average received less merit
pay than those on the west side.
* African-American principals got paid less than their
colleagues.
School district officials don't dispute WW's
numbers, but they caution against reading too much into
them. Evelyn Brzezinski, Portland Public Schools' director
of research and evaluation, says the differences in
pay discovered by WW are not statistically significant.
"Random fluctuations account for these relationships,"
she says.
Random or not, Charles Hopson, the head of the Oregon
Alliance of Black School Educators, says the results
are cause for concern.
Hopson, who is principal at Harriet Tubman Middle School
in North Portland, has heard rumblings from African-American
principals since they got their first-ever performance
pay review at the end of the last school year.
WW's analysis confirmed what several of those
principals suspected: African-American principals received
a merit-pay hike that was 26 percent lower than the
increase received by their white and Asian colleagues.
"This issue has been brought to my attention by OABSE
members already," says Hopson. "I'm not surprised."
The criteria established to determine merit pay specifically
did not include objective measurements such as test
scores and dropout rates, says Ed Bettencourt, who headed
the team that wrote the principals' evaluation form.
Bettencourt, who oversees half the district's elementary
schools, explains that evaluating objective data from
schools with radically different socioeconomic circumstances
proved impossible. Instead his group produced a 15-page
document, which describes six criteria for judging principals.
The criteria are subjective and even squishy, including
such factors as how successfully principals promote
achievement and collaborate with community members,
among other tasks.
Under the new system, principals get base pay ranging
from $70,900 at the elementary level to $80,100 in high
school, and they are eligible for performance pay of
up to an additional $9,600 after three years in their
posts. Each principal is evaluated by one of the district's
five directors of student achievement, who are the principals'
direct superiors.
In each of the six criteria, principals must be rated
either proficient or distinguished to earn extra money.
In practice, principals will only move up the scale
or remain at the same level. (If a director decides
to lower a principal's salary, says Gary Tuck of the
district's human-resources department, the move will
be equivalent to showing the principal the door.)
The idea, says Mike Hryciw, principal at Wilson High
and president of the Portland Association of Public
School Administrators, was that every principal would
have the same opportunity to earn a performance bonus.
While the opportunities may be equal in theory, in
reality the results show troubling evidence of disparities.
Two weeks ago, WW requested the salaries of
all 95 Portland principals. Of that group, 50 were eligible
for performance pay. An analysis of their compensation
shows that, on average, African-American principals
receive less merit pay than other principals, eastside
principals get less merit pay than westside pincipals,
and principals at schools with high levels of poverty
get less merit pay than those at affluent schools. The
relationships hold true across elementary, middle and
high schools, each of which has its own salary scale.
Although the absolute dollar numbers in pay differences
may be relatively small--a couple of thousand dollars
or less in most cases--in percentage terms, the gaps
in merit pay are large, averaging about 30 percent across
the three categories (see charts, page 22).
There are certainly exceptions to the averages. For
instance, two principals of low-income eastside schools
(Linda Wakefield, at Vernon Elementary, and LaVon Haley-Condon,
at Woodmere) are both near the top of the elementary
pay scale, earning $81,280 annually.
But on average, it doesn't pay to work in an eastside
school with students who are poor. Laverne Davis, the
principal at Applegate, is at the bottom of the elementary
pay scale, earning $76,750, while Yvonne Hachiya, Forest
Park Elementary's principal, is at the top of the scale,
earning $4,530 more. Applegate is one of the east side's
poorest schools. (Forest Park, a gleaming new westside
school, is the only elementary school in the city that
lists no children on free and reduced lunch.) Similarly,
Lela Roberts, principal at eastside Jefferson High,
is the lowest-paid among high school bosses at $85,550,
while Hryciw, her counterpart at Wilson, on the west
side, earns $5,900 more.
Perhaps the most troubling of WW's findings
is the disparity linked to race. Again, there are exceptions--two
of the three African-American principals who work on
the west side, for instance, are among the city's highest-paid.
But the average African-American elementary principal
earned $1,570 less performance pay than white and Asian
counterparts, a difference of 32 percent.
"It wasn't supposed to work out that way," Hopson says.
Brzezinski notes, however, that there is an important
difference between correlation and causation: African-American
principals may get paid less, she says, but it's not
necessarily because of their race.
Brzezinski and other district officials say that factors
other than geography, poverty and race are more important
in determining a principal's pay. Specifically, Brzezinski
says, the length of a principal's tenure in a school
and the experience level of the school's teachers are
more closely correlated to merit pay than poverty, geography
or race.
That, of course, raises the question of what "merit"
actually means and how fair the evaluations process
is, since principals have little control over how long
they stay in a building or who reports to them. Humboldt
and Jefferson, for instance, both went through reconstitution
in recent years, requiring their new principals to work
with a largely new staff.
Additionally, Hopson says, OABSE members worry that
African-American principals will suffer under performance
pay because they typically get placed at eastside schools
with high levels of poverty and low levels of achievement.
"There's no variable in the evaluation process that
accounts for challenging schools and gaps in test scores,"
he says.
Bettencourt concedes that principal evaluation is an
inexact process. He has convened a group to reexamine
the evaluation form that was used last year and to make
improvements. Despite the grumbling, however, Bettencourt
believes evaluations last year were far more thorough
and constructive than in past years, a sentiment echoed
by Peter Hamilton, Portland Public Schools' director
in charge of middle schools.
As for the school board, vice-chairman Marc Abrams
says that whatever problems cropped up in the program's
first year, he's pleased with the greater accountability
that he believes performance pay brings. "From a board
perspective," Abrams says, "this is a massive improvement."
That view isn't shared by three African-American principals
contacted by WW, all of whom requested anonymity.
In each case, the pay results clearly touched a raw
nerve. Discussions of the evaluation process led to
questions about whether the directors who do the evaluations--none
of whom is African American--understand the complexities
of working with poor, minority students.
A common concern among three principals is that African
Americans get pigeon-holed in the district. "We are
primarily placed in low-performing schools," says one
African-American principal.
And this isn't a case of sour grapes. Even the principal
who fared the best in this year's evaluations, Wilson's
Hryciw, says one of the biggest risks is that performance
pay may be a disincentive for improving the schools
most in need of help.
"It does raise the question," he says. "Why would a
principal go to a challenging school?"
--Deborah Rossiter assisted in researching this
article.
Meriting
Attention
COMPARISON
OF AVERAGE MERIT-PAY INCREASES GIVEN TO PORTLAND PRINCIPALS
IN 1999
by
race:
For comparison by race, WW analyzed
the merit pay awarded to principals at 50 schools. Of
those principals, nine are African American (four are
in elementary schools, three in middle schools and two
in high schools).
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS:
African American - $4,855
Other - $6,426
MIDDLE SCHOOLS:
African American - $4,937
Other - $5,517
HIGH SCHOOLS:
African American - $4,900
Other - $7,600
by
income:
For comparison by student poverty, WW
analyzed merit pay awarded to principals at those same
50 schools; "impoverished schools" refers to the 33
schools at which at least 35 percent of the students
qualify for free and reduced-price meals.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS:
African American - $6,068
Other - $6,600
MIDDLE SCHOOLS:
African American - $5,235
Other - $5,617
HIGH SCHOOLS:
African American - $4,650
Other - $7,766
by
location:
For comparison by location, WW compared
merit pay awarded to principals at 11 westside schools
with that given to principals at 37 eastside schools.
Two magnet schools were not included in the geographical
analysis.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS:
African American - $6,090
Other - $6,610
MIDDLE SCHOOLS:
African American - $4,966
Other - $7,140
HIGH SCHOOLS:
African American - $5,633
Other - $7,850
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Willamette Week | originally
published November 10,
1999
