Board Approves New Teacher Employment Strategy for Wilburn

May 20, 2008 - Wilburn Elementary will become the first school in the state to implement a new strategy for teacher employment after action by the Board of Education cleared the way today.

At its meeting this afternoon, the Board of Education approved Wilburn Elementary School’s request to use Title I school wide funds for implementation of the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP). Of the four WCPSS schools that use Title I school wide funds, Wilburn chose to implement TAP.

TAP is a strategy operated by the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching to attract, retain, develop and motivate talented people to the teaching profession. The program seeks to draw more talented people to the teaching profession—and keep them there—by making it more attractive and rewarding to be a teacher by earning higher salaries and providing opportunities to advance professionally while continuing as a classroom teacher. The program provides teachers opportunities to learn better teaching strategies and holds them accountable for their performance.

For Wilburn to begin the Teacher Advancement Program, the school board amended the teacher salary schedules to add the positions of:

This would allow Wilburn to designate two master teachers and seven mentor teachers in 2008-09. The salaries would be paid for by repurposing the school’s Title I federal funds.

The Teacher Advancement Program has four elements including multiple career paths, ongoing applied professional growth, instructionally focused accountability and performance based compensation.

Multiple career paths allow teachers to pursue a variety of positions throughout their careers—career, mentor and master teacher—depending upon their interests, abilities and accomplishments. As they move up the ranks, their qualifications, roles and responsibilities increase and so does their compensation. This allows good teachers to advance without having to leave the classroom.

Schools using TAP restructure schedules to provide time for teachers to take part in ongoing applied professional growth during the regular school day. Teachers have the chance to meet, learn, plan, mentor and share with other teachers, so they can constantly improve the quality of their instruction and increase their students' academic achievement. This collaborative time allows teachers to learn new instructional strategies and have greater opportunity to become more effective teachers.

The program provides a comprehensive system for instructionally focused accountability for evaluating teachers and rewarding them for how well they teach their students. Teachers are held accountable for meeting the TAP Teaching Skills, Knowledge and Responsibility Standards, as well as for the academic growth of their students.

The program provides for performance based compensation offering competitive salaries to those who teach in "hard-to-staff" subjects and schools.

-wcpss-