Do big salaries for great teachers equal better results?New experimental school tries to answer the problem. by Adam Garrett-Clark Between the walls of five red trailers behind the track at George Washington High School may be the beginnings of the future of American education. No matter what happens, starting Wed., Sept. 9, the whole country will be watching. That date is the first day of school for the first 120 fifth graders of The Equity Project (TEP), a new charter school that has seized national attention for what some are calling a revolutionary approach to education. At the front of the media’s fascination is the value the school places on its teachers. The eight educators, chosen from a pool of about 600 applicants, will receive a starting salary of $125,000 a year with opportunities for bonuses. Many view it as the first real experiment in what research and education professionals have been saying for years – that quality teachers are what matter most in effective education. To afford to pay what The New York Times has called a “dream team” of master teachers (the physical education teacher was the former personal trainer of Kobe Bryant), TEP has eliminated many typical positions like vice principal, restructured the teachers’ workday and assigned each teacher an additional school-wide role.  The school’s model was specifically designed to sustain itself without outside funding, surviving almost completely on public money. TEP does receive contributions to help pay for its facility, an expense normally left to a charter school.
It’s $2.5 million dollar budget is made up primarily of government grants, most of which from the state. If proven successful, TEP’s methods and philosophy, thoroughly outlined on its Web site, could send shockwaves through the country’s conceptions of education administration. Even before the first bell, the school is being debated in online education forums, criticized on the editorial pages of a newspaper in Houston and reviewed on Oregon public radio. So is the school’s founder and principal, Zeke Vanderhoek, nervous? “Not particularly,” he said. He’s as anxious as any administrator in a new school would be, he said, but right now he is mainly preoccupied with those 120 students. The school will phase in each additional grade in the coming years, eventually reaching full capacity of 480 students in grades fifth through eighth by 2013. Aside from the Manhattan Times, Vanderhoek has closed the doors to the media, telling them all to comeback in January. On Mon., Aug. 29, about a week before the big day, Vanderhoek’s schedule is accounted for almost to the minute. He has to get furniture into the classrooms, interview a prospective facilities manager and meet with a possible contributor to the school’s eventual permanent space. While Vanderhoek does hope his approach to paying teachers will inspire other schools to “reevaluate where they allocate their resources,” he said speculation about the impact that TEP may have on the American educational system is premature. “We haven’t accomplished anything yet,” he said. Students of TEP’s first fifth grade class were chosen through a lottery last April, narrowing down a pool of about 300 applicants, Vanderhoek said. Priority was given to children from District 6, which encompasses Northern Manhattan, whom TEP classified as at risk of academic failure. Vanderhoek said about half of the incoming students are below grade level in math and reading and many will have English as their second language. Vanderhoek began his education career with Teach for America, teaching sixth and eighth grade at I.S. 90 in Washington Heights. He said he decided to locate his new school in the neighborhood because of his fondness and familiarity with the area and its kids. Inside the English classroom, teacher Damion Frye of New Jersey is drilling computer shelves into a wall. “We got desk donations, but no computer stands,” he said. Frye heard of the unique teaching opportunity from his wife who had read an article on the school in The New York Times. TEP’s marketing campaign to prospective teachers was accomplished in one fell swoop, Vanderhoek said, when The New York Times ran a front page story on the school just as it began its search in the spring of 2008. Frye had to go through a year-long application process with multiple stages, including a live teaching audition with Vanderhoek standing in for a class of fifth graders. Part of Frye’s application included a written analysis of his teaching methods based on data gathered from his students’ performance. It was interesting, Frye said, allowing him a fresh way of looking at his life’s work. The document he ended up producing was nearly 400 pages. “It’s a little narcissistic,” he acknowledged. Frye is also in charge of all technology in the school.  The few critics that Vanderhoek has in the education world have said that giving teachers extra responsibilities can overburden them and dilute their efforts in the classroom. TEP teachers, in addition to taking on a school-wide role like discipline dean or parent coordinator, also lead three-hour “extended day programs” every week.
But Frye said the opportunity to play a leadership role in the overall school, rather than being directed by principals who have no knowledge of what happens at the classroom level, was a selling point for him. Across the hall in the science room, teacher Judy LeFevre from Arizona plans to keep her classroom design as flexible as possible. One of her first assignments for her students will be to work with diagrams to configure and reconfigure the furniture in the classroom. “Movement indoors is important,” she said. LeFevre has decades of teaching experience in the public school system of Arizona and is very excited to be working with her new team of master teachers. She and her colleagues just completed their “summer development institute,” a six-week program where the teachers form the curriculum and themes for the year. It was a refreshing change from the normal start of a school year, she said. “There was no one sitting back in their chair,” she said, “doing the deep sigh about the new year.” LeFevre describes her education career as “downwardly mobile.” A single mom, with little help, she sometimes worked three jobs to support her family. As she moved from school to school, honing her craft, her salary seemed to go down rather than up, she said. Eventually she made the decision to leave teaching for a higher paying job in the Arizona Department of Education. Her daughter and a good friend both directed her to the TEP Web site at about the same time. She applied, after giving the school’s plan a good look beyond the dollars and cents. Excited by the opportunity but wary of the competition, LeFevre said she wasn’t holding her breath. “I’m really excited to be back in the classroom,” she said. The Manhattan Times is the bilingual newspaper of Washington Heights and Inwood.
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