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l-r: Rep. Scott Hochberg (D-Houston), Larry Shaw, Tammy Kreuz,
Cindy Clegg and Dr. Melody Johnson |
On December 9th, 2009 CED partnered with the Texas Education and Business Coalition (TBEC) and the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce to host a luncheon discussion on CED's human resources in education report Teacher Compensation and Teacher Quality in Fort Worth, Texas.
Vice President and Director of Business and Government Relations, CED and Cynthia Fisher Miller, Senior Director, Workforce Development and Education, Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce. They were followed by CED's HR in Education Subcommittee Co-chair Steve Palko, President and Vice Chairman (retired), XTO Energy, Inc who provided keynote remarks, discussing the finding and recommendations of CED's report. Stating that we need incentives for teachers to fill specialized positions and that pension policies need more portability to reflect a mobile U.S. labor market, Palko's remarks were centered on the idea that the U.S.'s most valuable resources are our people and that our desire to enhance U.S education through teacher quality should be reflected in how we compensate classroom teachers.
As members of the panel that followed Palko's remarks, Representative Scott Hochberg (D-Houston), Vice Chair, House Public Education Committee, Dr. Melody Johnson, Superintendent, Fort Worth Independent School District, Cindy Clegg, Director, Human Resources, Texas Association of School Boards, Tammy K. Kreuz, Director for Educator Quality Initiatives, Institute for Public School Initiatives, the University of Texas System, and Larry Shaw, Executive Director, United Educators Association were tasked by panel moderator Bob Pence, President and CEO, Freese and Nichols, Inc. to discuss their perspectives on CED's report. Johnson discussed the challenges she faced as a superintendent of a Texas district on the cutting edge of teacher compensation reform and stressed the importance of having teachers involved with the process from the beginning so that they become stakeholders in any new compensation system. Panelists Clegg and Kreuz agreed with CED that the base-salary system is flawed, with Kreuz noting that the problem is not just about distributing money effectively, but is about a smarter systemic approach to recruiting, paying, and promoting effective teachers. Shaw, as a representative of teachers' interests agreed with Johnson that gaining teachers trust and interest in changing compensation systems is a major part of reforming any districts pay plans, while Representative Hochberg issued a challenge to CED to write what he termed the "next chapter" of the study, specifically, how we rationally build incentives for teaching positions that help the lowest income students.
Approximately 110 of Texan business leaders, policy makers and educators attended the lunch and received copies of CED's report. The luncheon was hosted at the Fort Worth City Club and was part of an ongoing two-year effort funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to engage the business community and other stakeholders on teacher compensation systems in Texas and across the country.
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