District Trendline, previously known as Teacher Trendline, provides actionable research to improve district personnel policies that will strengthen the teacher workforce. Want evidence-based guidance on policies and practices that will enhance your ability to recruit, develop, and retain great teachers delivered right to your inbox each month? Subscribe here.
With contract
negotiations in Chicago attracting national attention, this special edition
of the Trendline takes a look at how the Windy City compares to the 50
largest districts in the country and other Illinois districts on some of the
major points on the table, including teacher compensation and evaluation.
Background on Chicago
In 2012, Chicago teachers went
on strike for more than a week over several issues including compensation,
evaluation and recall rights. The strike ended when a three-year agreement was
reached; that agreement expired on June 30, 2015. The district and the union
have been in negotiations for a new contract for over a year.
At the end of January, Chicago
Public Schools made a contract offer that the union
labeled as “serious.”
The union leadership put the offer to a vote of their “Big Bargaining Team,” a halfway
step between the primary bargaining team and putting the tentative agreement to
a full union vote. On February 1, the offer
was unanimously rejected. That started the clock ticking on a process known
as fact finding. If there is still no agreement after the fact finding process,
CPS teachers may
go on strike at the end of May. In the meantime, the district moved forward
with millions
in budget cuts and warned teachers that it would no longer pay a portion of
their pension contributions starting as soon as March.
While there are many issues important to both sides (e.g.,
teacher evaluations and professional development), we think that compensation
is likely to be the linchpin of any agreement since the district is struggling
financially, recently borrowing
$725 million to keep its doors open.
The district is looking for concessions, most notably an end
to its practice of a pension “pick-up,” whereby the district covers most of the
contribution teachers are supposed to make to their retirement system. The
union’s stated
priorities primarily focus on non-compensation issues and it cited
a lack of trust in the district’s ability to deliver on promises in the
contract proposal and the failure of the district to address fiscal instability
as the primary reasons for rejecting the recent offer.
Salary
The Teacher
Contract Database shows that, compared to the other largest districts in
the country, Chicago teachers are paid well throughout their careers.
In 2014-2015, among
the 40 largest school districts in the country with traditional salary
schedules, teachers in Chicago (the dark green line in the graph above) had the
fifth highest salary—adjusted for cost of living—for first-year teachers with a
BA, behind four Texas districts (Northside, Cypress-Fairbanks, Fort Bendand Fort Worth). It also had the second
highest maximum salary, behind only Gwinnett County (GA).[1]
The graph below highlights teacher salaries in Chicago and
the other five largest districts in the country. You can view the interactive
version and see salary information for all 40 districts here.
Of course, local context is important. It surely matters
less to Chicago’s teachers how their pay compares to teachers in New York and
Los Angeles than how it compares to districts just a few miles away. We
compared Chicago’s salaries with those of several of the largest districts in
Illinois (Elgin, Rockford, and Indian
Prairie) and several Chicago suburbs using salaries as reported in the Illinois
Board of Education’s annual teacher salary study (get the data here).
The salary schedule in Chicago (the dark green line) is more
generous than the median salary schedule for all districts in the state of
Illinois (the gray line) as reported by the Illinois State Board of Education.
Although Chicago
appears to be offering teachers significantly higher salaries than other
Illinois districts, the picture changes when you consider how the Windy City
compares to its suburbs. Its seemingly high salaries likely reflect the higher
cost of living in the greater Chicago area. As you can see in the graph below,
Chicago (the dark and light green lines) is competitive with a sample of its
surrounding suburbs, with or without the pension pick-up. The district offers
one of the top three highest salaries across the schedule at every major point
of a teacher’s career, except when a teacher reaches the highest scheduled salary,
where Chicago falls out of the top five.
View the interactive version of this graph here.
Pensions
It’s worth noting that comparing salaries across districts
in Illinois can be challenging due to the practice of pension pick-ups. In most
retirement systems, both employees and employers contribute to the pension
plan. In Chicago the required teacher contribution to the pension plan is nine
percent of a teacher’s salary. Currently, teachers contribute two percent of
their salary and the district “picks-up” the remaining seven percent, in
addition to making the required employer contribution. In the latest proposal
which the union rejected, the district wanted to cut this pick-up.
Although not generally a common practice across the country,
according to the Illinois
Policy Institute, as of 2011, almost two-thirds of districts in Illinois
pay some portion of teachers’ required contributions. Our analysis of the
2014-2015 teacher
salary data collected by the Illinois State Board of Education found that while
just over one-third of Illinois districts do not report picking up any portion
of teachers’ pension contributions, just over one-third of Illinois districts
pick up the entire pension contribution.
Health Insurance
The final piece of compensation is health insurance.
Currently, Chicago teachers pay anywhere between 1.3 and 2.8 percent of their
base salary towards their health care plan. In 19 of the 50 largest districts
in the country, the district pays 100 percent of the health insurance premium
while the majority of districts (27 of the top 50) require teachers to pay some
portion of the premium.
Proposed Compensation
Changes
The proposal that was rejected at the beginning of this
month included changes to the salary scale, pension pick-up and health
insurance. The district offered a salary increase of 8.75 percent over the next
three school years, the largest increase coming in 2017-2018 at three percent. To
add some context to that proposed increase, in 2014-2015, eight districts in
the 50 largest across the country gave raises greater than three percent, with
eight districts offering no raises and four districts reducing teacher salaries,
according to NCTQ calculations.
It may seem like the district’s 8.75 percent phased-in
salary increase over the next three years is a lot, but this highlights the
importance of considering compensation issues as a whole in order to understand
the full context of the proposed changes. The suggested raises would be
significantly offset by the district’s proposal to eliminate the seven percent
pension pick-up and require teachers to contribute more to their health
insurance. When the loss of the pension pick-up is considered equivalent to a
seven percent salary decrease, the district offered teachers a net increase of
1.75 percent over the next three years.
Evaluation
While compensation issues have been and likely will remain
the sticking point of negotiations between Chicago’s district and teachers
union, teacher evaluation has surfaced as another important topic at the
bargaining table.
Currently, 10 percent of the evaluation for Chicago teachers
who teach non-tested subjects is based on a school-wide value added score. In
the rejected contract proposal, the district offered to eliminate this
component entirely. In the 50 largest districts in the country, 10 use some
school-wide component in evaluations for teachers in non-tested subjects. In Shelby County (TN), school-wide
value added data counts for 35 percent of the evaluation, the largest portion
in any of the largest districts.
Another evaluation issue on the
table is the number of times teachers are observed. Currently, Chicago teachers
are observed four times per evaluation cycle (four times in one year for
teachers with a previous evaluation rating of unsatisfactory or developing and four
times over two years for teachers with either proficient or higher ratings). The
plurality of the 50 largest districts in the country (44 percent) observes teachers
only one or two times per year. The rejected proposal would have reduced the
number of required observations per evaluation cycle from four to three.
We’ll be keeping a close eye on Chicago as negotiations
continue. Given the apparent
lack of trust on both sides of the table and some of the points that appear
to be playing a key role such as charter schools and tax issues, agreement on compensation
alone may not bring the two sides together.
For more details on Chicago’s policies, visit the district’s
database page. For more information on the proposal and negotiations you
can read the district’s summary of the rejected proposal here
and the union’s summary here.
[1]
All salaries have been adjusted for cost of living using the Bureau of Economic
Analysis’ 2013 Regional
Price Parities
