Pay-for-Performance Teacher Compensation
An Inside View of Denver’s ProComp Plan

By Phil Gonring, Paul Teske, and Brad Jupp

Denver’s groundbreaking campaign to introduce performance-based pay for teachers captured national and international attention and has paved the way for similar efforts elsewhere. Based on unprecedented labor-management collaboration, the newly implemented ProComp compensation plan is the most advanced in the country. Each teacher’s pay is based on several factors:
evaluated performance, professional development efforts, and willingness to work with at-risk populations, as well as student achievement. Denver’s ProComp plan has raised the debate over teacher compensation to a new level.

In this book, Phil Gonring, Paul Teske, and Brad Jupp—among the key players in this successful come-from-behind campaign—offer the inside story of the ProComp initiative. They describe how entrepreneurial behavior within the teachers union and support from outside philanthropic groups propelled the plan from a cutting-edge concept into concrete policy.

Praise:

“ProComp has established a foundation for future efforts to change how teachers are paid. This book reveals the details of the brave effort to rethink teacher compensation through labor-management collaboration. And when it comes to education reforms, the details are precisely the toughest part.”
—Adam Urbanski, Director, Teacher Union Reform Network

“When the history of the triumph of pay-for-performance teacher compensation
is finally written, this book will be one of the key sources. Gonring, Teske, and
Jupp recount the process, explain the initiative, and foreshadow what’s next for
this issue. In doing so they make clear why Denver has played a signal role in this
debate.”
—Andy Rotherham, Cofounder and Codirector of Education Sector, and
Coeditor, Collective Bargaining in Education

"Everyone says we must attract better teachers and pay them for the right results. Denver is one of the few places that is doing something about it. Performance pay is hard to design well and even harder to manage politically. In this book, key insiders show us how it can be done."
—Paul T. Hill, John and Marguerite Corbally Professor, and Director, Center on Reinventing Public Education, Evans School of Public Affairs, University of Washington

About the Authors:

Phil Gonring is a senior program officer at the Rose Community Foundation. He was integrally involved in ProComp’s development and continues to lead the philanthropic community’s efforts to implement the ProComp plan.

Paul Teske is a professor of public affairs and director of the Center for Education Policy Analysis at the School of Public Affairs at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center.

Brad Jupp is a senior academic policy advisor to the superintendent of the Denver Public Schools. Jupp served for six years as a union representative and teacher leader in the effort to create ProComp.