In Lake County’s Community High School District 128, teachers on average earn $102,000 and administrators $146,000 — but that doesn’t include annual bonuses.
The affluent district paid more than $500,000 in bonus checks this month, mostly to teachers and administrators rewarded for high student achievement, but to all other employees as well, with limited exceptions.
The bonuses — described in district records as “performance recognition” — also went to custodians, security staff, technicians, library aides, bookkeepers and school finance staffers, among others. Everyone met the same academic criteria to qualify and everyone got checks worth 1.5 percent of base salary. The average bonus was about $1,300, and several dozen teachers and administrators got more than $1,800.
It’s become more common for school districts both in Illinois and around the country to experiment with ways to link compensation and student achievement.
Whether they’re called bonuses, incentives, rewards or merit pay, the programs — pushed in part by funding from the Obama administration — have spawned both support and rancor, according to educators, researchers, union officials and taxpayers.
The District 128 bonuses are unusual in that they include virtually all staff members, not just teachers and administrators.
“From a compensation philosophy standpoint, it’s a team sport,” said District 128 School Board President Pat Groody. “We believe everyone matters, and that goes all the way to people working in our facilities to our best teachers. We really wanted to get people focused on the concept that performance matters.”
Longtime school watchdog Timothy Anderson questioned the criteria used in District 128 to award the bonuses: Why did so many people who are not licensed educators receive them and are they necessary given the already high student achievement in the district’s two high schools in Libertyville and Vernon Hills?
“They’re giving a Christmas bonus to everybody. That is fine if you’re doing it in a privately owned company but not with taxpayers’ money,” Anderson said. He referred to the bonuses as Christmas-related because the checks were sent in December, but the district said the bonuses are not connected to the holidays.
Much of the debate over bonuses swirls around what has long been the status quo in teacher compensation: raises for experience and adding education credentials, such as a master’s degree.
That approach goes back decades — a way to standardize pay for educators and fix inequities in teacher pay based on race, gender, nepotism and other factors, said Matthew Springer, an assistant professor of public policy and education at Vanderbilt University who has researched performance-based pay for educators.
That traditional system results in the same type of raises for teachers, “regardless of their effectiveness,” Springer said. “It is inefficient, it is broken — but we don’t know how to fix it yet.”
Bonus and incentive programs in other states have produced varied results, some short-lived, Springer said. “They are so controversial that they are likely to come under some type of scrutiny,” he said.
The Tribune previously wrote about bonuses given to teachers and administrators who have already retired — payouts that come after a series of salary increases and distributed after the educator is out the door. The practice prompted a state lawmaker to file legislation to ban such post-retirement bonuses that cost taxpayers thousands of dollars.
New statewide salary data from the Illinois State Board of Education shows 144 school districts in 2015-16 provided bonuses, usually in addition to regular salary increases, to teachers or administrators or both. That represents nearly 20 percent of the state’s public school districts.
About 3,100 employees got the bonuses, adding up to about $5.5 million, with the average bonus at about $1,750, according to the data. The state’s data includes only licensed educators, including teachers, administrators and other licensed professionals in schools, such as social workers and school counselors.
So not all bonuses would show up in the data for places such as District 128, which gave bonuses to nonlicensed employees as well.
Teachers in regular public schools in the Chicago Public Schools system do not get performance bonuses, and the Chicago Teachers Union has fought against merit pay.
However, in 2015-16, close to 100 educators got bonuses in several charter schools in Chicago — public schools that are privately run.
At Horizon Science Academy-McKinley Park charter school, Principal Cafer Cengiz said bonuses are paid to teachers for a variety of reasons, including when students show growth on critical tests or do well in competitions such as science fairs.
“It motivates the teachers; they want to earn that bonus. They put in more effort. And I believe it helps the kids,” Cengiz said. In 2015-16, 43 educators at the school got bonuses adding up to $113,400. The average bonus was $2,637.
Algonquin-based Community Unit School District 300 focused on bonuses for administrators rather than rank-and-file teachers, spending about $184,300 in 2015-16 for nearly 100 employees, including principals, assistant principals, deans and other administrators. The average bonus was $1,920.
Spokesman Anthony McGinn said, “District 300 provides performance bonuses to our administrators as part of our compensation package. The bonuses are based upon an administrator’s performance in relationship to their annual evaluation and established goals.”
Likewise, McHenry County’s Community High School District 155 also provides administrator bonuses based on evaluations and goals, district officials said. The district spent about $205,000 in 2015-16, for 52 administrators, with the average bonus about $3,900, state data show.
Lincolnshire-Prairie View School District 103 in Lake County launched a program for teacher performance bonuses that went from 2013-14 through 2015-16, using district evaluations of teachers to calculate bonuses, said Dan Stanley, the district’s assistant superintendent for business. Teachers getting higher ratings on those evaluations would get larger bonuses, he said.
For 2015-16, the district spent about $111,500 on the bonuses, averaging about $885 per teacher.
Elsewhere, districts had other reasons for providing bonuses.
Downstate Pekin Public Schools District 108 gives bonuses to teachers who use only a minimal number of sick days or attain perfect attendance. Caty Campbell, the payroll and accounting coordinator, said the program was implemented to stave off growing costs for substitute teachers. “This was a way to incentivize people to come to work,” she said.
The sick day bonuses in 2015-16 ranged from $75 to $250 for about 100 Pekin District 108 employees, totaling $12,800, according to state data.
In southern Illinois, the financially struggling East St. Louis School District 189 gave nearly $1 million in bonuses in 2015-16 — for 345 employees, mostly teachers getting $3,000 each, according to state data. A district spokeswoman, Sydney Stigge-Kaufman, said the bonuses were one-time stipends in lieu of regular salary increases, and were provided as part of a union contract settlement.
The one-time bonuses are not embedded in district salary plans that compound over the years.
“In the long term, it benefits the district,” said Jeffrey Schubert, director of finance and operations in Cary School District 26 in McHenry County. There, the district broke out the salary increase for teachers by including a regular salary increase, and then a one-time bonus, according to Schubert. The bonuses for 123 teachers in 2015-16 added up to about $34,000, according to the state data, with an average bonus of $271.
In Vernon Hills-based high school District 128, it was the school board’s idea to do performance-related bonuses for teachers and staff, said Groody, the board president. The board and the teacher’s union worked on the criteria for the bonuses as part of negotiations for the 2013-18 union contract.
“Any kind of payment of an incentive was controversial,” Groody recalled. “I remember very specifically when we were negotiating, the fundamental concept that some element of compensation would be at risk was a breakthrough thought.”
The district kept the traditional salary schedules that give pay increases for experience and educational attainment.
But it added a performance recognition bonus for meeting specific districtwide academic criteria related to statewide and college entrance exams; the percent of students who take college-level Advanced Placement exams and the percent who pass them; and the percent of students participating in extracurricular activities.
Meeting the criteria in a specific number of areas would mean teachers could get bonuses of at least 1 or 1.5 percent of their base salaries. The program was expanded to employees who were not licensed educators. That meant virtually all employees in varied jobs could get the bonuses, with limited exceptions. Those not eligible for bonuses included staffers in their first year of employment and employees getting specific end-of-career raises as they head into retirement.
About 420 teachers, administrators and other staffers across the district got the bonuses in 2015 and 2016. The district spent about $520,000 on the bonuses in 2015 and about $536,000 in 2016.
Anderson, a Libertyville resident who keeps a close eye on the school board, remains critical, maintaining that the standards to get the bonuses are “artificially low” and can be “reached automatically just for showing up.”
In addition, teachers are already well paid and meeting the outlined criteria should be a given rather than an opportunity for an extra bonus, he said.
“Isn’t that what we pay the salary for in the first place?” he asked.
“I think this is a waste of taxpayers’ money.”
Twitter @diane_rado