Eagle+County,+Colorado

Bill Gates picked one school to visit in 2012, Eagle County High School in Colorado's Eagle County school district. http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20121015/NEWS/121019915

He wrote about it in The Wall Street Journal in January 2013 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323539804578261780648285770.html?mod=ITP_review_0

Quote from that article: In October, Melinda and I sat among two dozen 12th-graders at Eagle Valley High School near Vail, Colo. Mary Ann Stavney, a language-arts teacher, was leading a lesson on how to write narrative nonfiction pieces. She engaged her students, walking among them and eliciting great participation. We could see why Mary Ann is a master teacher, a distinction given to the school's best teachers and an important component of a teacher-evaluation system in Eagle County. Ms. Stavney's work as a master teacher is informed by a three-year project our foundation funded to better understand how to build an evaluation and feedback system for educators. Drawing input from 3,000 classroom teachers, the project highlighted several measures that schools should use to assess teacher performance, including test data, student surveys and assessments by trained evaluators. Over the course of a school year, each of Eagle County's 470 teachers is evaluated three times and is observed in class at least nine times by master teachers, their principal and peers called mentor teachers. The Eagle County evaluations are used to give a teacher not only a score but also specific feedback on areas to improve and ways to build on their strengths. In addition to one-on-one coaching, mentors and masters lead weekly group meetings in which teachers collaborate to spread their skills. Teachers are eligible for annual salary increases and bonuses based on the classroom observations and student achievement.  The program faces challenges from tightening budgets, but Eagle County so far has been able to keep its evaluation and support system intact—likely one reason why student test scores have improved in Eagle County over the past five years.

For the district scores did go up for five straight years from 2007 to 2011, but dropped in 2012 Math 2007 52 2008 51 2009 56 2010 58 2011 61 2012 56 (4 points above 2007)

Reading 2007 65 2008 66 2009 68 2010 70 2011 71 2012 73 (8 points above 2007)

Writing 2007 54 2008 52 2009 55 2010 56 2011 60 2012 58 (4 points above 2007)

Science 2010 51 2011 51 2012 51 (no change)

There are two high schools in Eagle County, Eagle County High which Gates visited and Battle Mountain High School, which is struggling despite having the same teacher evaluation / compensation system as Eagle County High School.

Battle Mountain Economically Disadvantaged Math 2007 10 2008 6 2009 9 2010 20 (17 for state) 2011 18 (17 for state) 2012 9 (17 for state)

Reading 2007 29 2008 29 2009 42 2010 41 (48 for state) 2011 37 (46 for state) 2012 51 (50 for state)

Writing 2007 18 2008 7 2009 21 2010 26 (27 for state) 2011 21 (29 for state) 2012 27 (30 for state)

Science 2010 23 (25 for state) 2011 18 (26 for state) 2012 19 (28 for state)

Merrit pay in Eagle County Was originally the TAP program where teachers would get bonuses. then changed to a system where bonus was a percent of your salary, up to 4% for test scores and 4% for observations. Seems like they ran out of money for it, though. Seems to be a max of $5,000 for a veteran teacher or $3,000 for a new teacher.

Also has positions for mentor teachers (5,000 dollars) and Master teacher (10,000 dollars) who are part time administrators helping other teachers. Evaluation called the PEAR
 * Professional Excellence, Accountability and Recognition**

It is quite confusing, but teachers can get about 8% based on their district and schools test scores. Then teachers can get raises based on their individual ratings. Seems like bonuses are around $3,000 to $5,000 depending on their salaries.

In this flyer it says that bonuses are currently cut in half because of budget concerns, so you can only get a max of 4%. The average is 2%, which is, on average, under $1,000.

http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20120921/NEWS/120929980

Flyer from district about the merit pay plan http://www.eagleschools.net/index.aspx?page=649


 * **Annual Bonus**. There is an annual bonus paid to teachers based on an index of student assessment results. The index is made up of a district-wide ACT component, a district-wide CSAP component, a building CSAP component and a building NWEA-MAPS component. These four components come together to form an index of assessments which determines the amount of the teacher bonus. This bonus is up to 4% of the teacher’s actual contract salary (//due to the current budget crisis, the percentage used in payout calculations is currently cut in half//).
 * **Salary Increase**. Eagle County Schools abandoned the “lock-step” salary schedule in 2002. Increases to salary are determined by 0 to 4% for individual performance based on the teacher’s evaluation scores (//due to the current budget crisis, the percentage used in payout calculations is currently cut in half//), plus a negotiated/inflationary component (varies based on cost of living, funding).

Colorado data website is great https://edx.cde.state.co.us/growth_model/public/index.htm#/year-2012/district-0910/schools

Some stats: 6000 students in district 50% hispanic 50% white 33% free lunch 10% reduced