Faculty Compensation Tier System
After publishing Episode 40 of RenewCast, I’ve had a handful of comments and questions wondering what a Tier System could look like for Faculty Development and Compensation. In this episode, I suggested that Schools need to have a compensation plan in place which nurtures the school’s values and strategic initiatives for its faculty. Unfortunately, like many things, we can slip into limiting our philosophy to “obvious” areas like mission statements, curriculum decisions, and in the boundaries we put in place to hire mission-fit employees –all of which are absolutely essential. Unintentionally (and even intentionally), we can leave many of the more “neutral” areas of our school untouched – like report cards, bell schedules, homecoming dances, and compensation models. Without question, how a Christian school approaches conversations around gender or creation accounts need to be held under the lens of our school missions and in constant dependence upon a biblical foundation. But, so should everything else!
Yes, Chapel and student discipleship programs are school artifacts which reflect what our schools value and believe. But, all of our artifacts also reflect values and beliefs; they just may not be the ones we say are core to our school. Until we hold all areas under the microscope of these core values, we’ll continue to wrestle against dissonance (at best) or toxic conflict among competing idols within the school (at worst).
When it comes to compensation, almost every school uses a step scale … even Christian Schools. Step scales are extremely transparent and predictable, which are both good things for compensation within an organization. These models are ubiquitous in public schools, because they’re deeply beloved by teacher’s unions. In a union’s perspective, protecting the teacher seniority and longevity is a core value. Step scales accomplish that remarkably well, because they ensure that the highest compensation will go to the teachers who have been around the longest. In this model, a teacher’s greatest value to the system is his or her credentials (experience and degrees) … not necessarily excellence.
On the other hand, some schools try to compensate faculty according to merit-based systems, and in many ways this is the Wild, Wild West of teacher pay. Science teachers are paid more because it’s harder to find good science teachers; heads of household are paid more because their spouses don’t make as much; some teachers are given random “stipends” because of their contributions to the school; certain teachers who ask for raises are more likely to get it than teachers who never ask. Granted, I’ve seen some merit-based models that have stated structures. Far too often, they’re more like back room, handshake agreements intended to keep the teachers who are more vital to the school, inevitably causing friction and mistrust. It’s rarely transparent or verifiable, and someone’s feelings always get hurt.
There has to be a way to both
Enter the Faulty Tier System
Let me first talk about the pay part of it, and then we’ll get to the strategic, institutional benefits. Let’s say a gifted, younger teacher approaches her administrator and says, “I’d really love to be able to make a career out of teaching here. Of course, the pay is a concern, but I also would love to know how I could do more to have greater influence in the life of the school.” Isn’t this what we want? A teacher who wants to make a career out of it and is looking to have greater influence? Ideally, the answer isn’t, “Well, just stick around long enough, and you’ll see those raises over time. And, the longer you’re here, the more eligible you are to become a department chair, which brings a stipend with it.” Of course, no administrator should say something so bleak, but far too often that’s really all an administrator can say, given a step-scale model. It doesn’t encourage innovation, excellence, or a willingness to do more to further the mission of the school. It tells teachers to stay in their lanes and stay the course. We also don’t want an administrator to say, “You’re right. You do such a good job; I’m going to put in to get you a $3,500 increase. Would that be enough?” Of course, most schools can’t just arbitrarily give raises with their limited resources, but raises should be based on something tangible.
The Tier System (which also goes by other names) gives a school more flexibility to build a model that rewards what the school values. It’s transparent in that it can be published, which then gives faculty and their administrators to have a template for conversations about advancement. Unlike the step-scale, the administration isn’t bound to automatically pay teachers according to a matrix. As teachers meet requirements, they become eligible to move from one Tier to the next. But, the school can always include “principal approval” or “supervisor approval” as a requirement to move between tiers and have those permissions linked to evaluation or performance. That’s one of the huge benefits of a system like this; a school can link it to an evaluation model and even include in the template that the teachers have to maintain certain evaluation standards in order to be eligible to move between tiers. Also, in this context, a school can refer to teachers make statements like “Tier 3 teachers will be leading reading groups,” and everyone knows who the Tier 3 teachers are, and because of the published system, people have a general idea what those people make. That transparency both helps build trust and could motivate teachers who aspire to move up to that Tier to lead that group.
For example, I’m including a tier model that’s based on one of the schools where I worked. This model is a six tier model. Novice teachers with no experience are hired as Tier 1 teachers. Tier 6 teachers were part of the Faculty Council … the “master teachers.” Based upon experience (both teaching and leadership), Principals could place new hires where they felt a teacher would fit. Newly hired distinguished teachers may come in as high as Tier 5 if they were going to be assuming a Department Chair role or something comparable. In this model, some teachers were capped at certain Tiers because they either didn’t have a required degree or because they weren’t interested in taking on more leadership in the life of the school. So, as the most experienced teacher in a tier, they would be “capped” at a certain pay until they jumped through whatever hoop required to be eligible to make that move. As a result, there was a range to compensation within a Tier - usually around $3,000, between the newest entries into the tier and the more experienced teachers in those tiers. And, there was typically a $3,000 jump between the highest pay of one tier and the lowest pay of the next tier.
In this model, entry level teachers would be paid $36,000, and the highest a teacher could make without co-curricular stipends would be $76,000. Those Tier 6 teachers made significantly more than Tier 5 because they worked they had summer responsibilities (eleven month employees instead of ten). Every couple of years, the school would adjust the ranges, based on cost of living increases.
Some schools have five tiers instead of six. In that case, a school may not have as big of a range between its highest and lowest paid teachers. If I were to try to build one of these systems from scratch at a school, I’d build the financial part of the system around our current pay range, and go from there. Of course, I would want to have some strategic objectives where I’d want to more aggressively increase the pay of those higher tiers, as I’d be asking those teachers to take on more leadership.
Here is an example, very much like the one we had where I used to work. I tweaked a few things to simplify and added a few components that I thought would help to make the system more clear:
For the first three Tiers, you'll notice that requirements for eligibility increase as Evaluation items decrease (certainly in terms of their frequency). Also, this sort of Template functioned as a checklist for faculty members so they could easily see where they stand in terms of eligibility. Typically, one of the distinctives of this particular system is that teachers could not move from one tier to the next until they had met the institutional requirements of the previous Tiers. So, if an experienced Teacher was hired as a Tier 4 teacher, he would have to take the Worldview Foundation Course (required in the first year of being hired), write his philosophy paper, and get his Bible requirements before being eligible to move to Tier 5, even though those would be expected of Tiers in earlier stages of the tier system.
Tier 4-6 Teachers have FAR GREATER responsibility. But, according to the system, that doesn't necessarily mean it's because they are the more senior teachers. If a teacher came in at Tier 3 because she had five years of teaching experience and held a Masters, she would need to spend at least two years in Tier 3 and would have to complete all of the requirements from the previous tiers. But, if she was clearly seen as an excellent teacher and leader among the faculty, she could be promoted to Tier 4 as a teacher with only seven years of teaching, and would have significant leadership in the school.
Tier 6 Teachers have great oversight in this model; that's why they have summer responsibilities. In God's mercy to me, I was allowed to be in this highest Tier in my twelfth year of teaching. The other Tier 6 teachers all had more than twenty-five years of teaching experience. But, I was moved through the system as quickly as the system allowed, because of the work I was doing to build the faculty development program. So, I was promoted for the purpose of institutional need. And, that became a significant distinctive of this system: those teachers who were promoted to Tiers 5 and 6 didn't just need to have their supervisor's approval, but it also required a recommendation from the Tier 6 teachers, because they saw the institutional need.
Mission Alignment
There are a lot of components in this model that may seem foreign, as they are unique to this individual school. This model was build by both the Administration of the school and representatives from the faculty. They sought to answer the question: what do we value as a faculty community, and they built those things in as expectations. In Episode 39 of RenewCast I talk about a Worldview Development Program, which in many ways is built upon what we developed at the school. One of my friends who worked with me at that school but has sense moved on to another school listened to that episode and told me that it's much harder to build a development program like what we had because there has to be a model in place that incentives and rewards growth in these areas. Typically, people jumped through these hoops because of the requirement for Tier movement, but every single teacher remarked how much they grew by taking part in it. But, we needed a system to put on paper what we valued. The Tier System accomplished that.
Some Explanations
Bible Requirement: Considering that we can’t teach from a Biblical worldview if we don’t know the Bible, our school required teachers to have Bible “credits.” Teachers had to take three courses (week long classes offered during the summer). One of the Pentateuch, one on the book of Romans, and one on Creation, Fall, and Redemption. If teachers had at least twelve hours of Bible credit in college, they did not have to take these classes.
Biblical Worldview Foundation Course: This was a 25 hour course that we designed to establish a common vocabulary for our teachers, whether they had thirty years of teaching in a Christian school or were fresh out of a State university’s education department. This foundation became vital to getting everyone on the same page, allowing us to go much deeper with teachers in weekly staff development workshops and meetings.
Peer Observation: Because it’s good to watch other teachers teach, we required that teachers not only observed other teachers once a semester, but were observed as well. But, the real growth came in requiring them to schedule time after the observations to talk about what they learned from each other.
Philosophy of Education Paper: Though most people in ACSI are accustomed to the idea, we built our own requirements and included them in our worldview foundation course. So, the course gave them the language to begin to think about writing the paper. Teachers in various stages of the Tier System were involved in mentoring and advising new teachers through the process.
Weekly Professional Development Meetings: Students came to school an hour late on Wednesdays, but the faculty reported at the normal start time. This provided an hour every week - for staff meetings, worshiping together as a staff, and professional development workshops that were based on our worldview foundation.
Worldview Implementation Project: After teachers had learned the vernacular of the school, they are then challenged to evaluate some of their own practice through the lens of the framework that our course provided. The project then guided them through the evaluation, constructing a plan to improve on that practice, then sharing to the faculty what was learned through that process.
Where to start
It could be daunting to even think about building a program like this, especially considering that it means your school might be “assigning” teachers into different Tiers. It doesn’t have to be six tiers. You could just have four. But, I would start with defining the characteristics of a “master teacher” in your school context and build that into the highest tier in your system. From there, I would focus on what “growth” looks like in your school, and then build that into the model to nurture the culture of growth toward that tier.
Of course, things always become tense when we deal with someone’s pay. Let’s say you have a teacher who’s been there for a long time, but “underperforms” in terms of the culture of growth you’re after. Once you build out your tiers with assigned pay ranges, you might have to place that teacher in a lower tier, but pay him/her at a higher rate than that Tier range, but be very clear that the pay will be capped where it is until that teacher begins to follow the growth model of the system.
After all of this, it should be obvious that I’m entirely on board with a system like this, and I’ve had multiple conversations with schools that have entered down this path. It would bring me great joy to help your school in the building process - to envision the core values you would want to build into your system and also anticipate landmines you might step on. I’ve blown off more than a few digits along the way. Let me know if there’s anyway RenewEd can be a part of helping you navigate this worthwhile initiative.
