Dive Brief:
- Performance bonuses in Lake County (IL) Community High School District 128 included raises for security officers, custodians, technicians and other support staff, in addition to teachers and administrators who received increases as a reward for high student achievement.
- Some are raising eyebrows at the 1.5% across the board bonus, but district leaders say student achievement is a team effort.
- The Chicago Tribune reports 144 school districts in the state — nearly 20% of the districts in Illinois — received some type of performance bonus in 2015-2016.
Dive Insight:
Performance-based or incentivized compensation has been a controversial practice across the country, and one that some teachers unions, including the Chicago Teachers Union, whose teachers were not among those in Illinois to receive the bonuses, have fought against. However, in many instances, these pay structures further exasperate inequities in teacher pay and retention.
In Lake County, teachers already earn an average base salary of about $108,000, and the high schools in the district are traditionally high-performing. When juxtaposed against a median salary of around $71,000 for Chicago Public School teachers in a district traditionally facing lower achievement and higher stress levels for educators, it presents a case around which one could build an argument of separate and unequal systems of education in the state. With greater pay and fewer stressors in the suburban districts, those in urban areas like Chicago must fight harder to retain high-quality talent or be stuck in a pattern of mediocrity and underperformance propelled by a revolving door of staff and instability in the classrooms.