 The Equity Project Charter School opened in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan five years ago, with a fairly simple concept: get rid of extra administrative positions and pay teachers a lot of money—a base salary of $125,000 plus benefits and potential bonuses after two years of teaching. (A New York City public school teacher with five years of experience, by comparison, makes between $64,009 and $75,796.) The data was drawn from standardized testing, comparing students who were demographically and academically similar in surrounding neighborhood schools: TEP Students Additional Years of Learning in Math, English Language Arts, and Science Mathematica Policy Research Even though the Equity Project students fared better compared to their peers at surrounding schools, the Wall Street Journal notes that only 43% of the school’s eighth-graders passed state math exams in 2013. The report to be released Friday by Mathematica Policy Research said the school’s students made more progress than similar children attending traditional... The research group Mathematica Policy Research tracked the experiment at the middle school (fifth through eighth grade), and recently released an analysis, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, of the school’s effectiveness during its first four years. The result: students gradually achieved significantly higher levels of learning, with a major leap during their fourth year, equivalent to more than one and a half grade levels for math and nearly half a year for English.
– A charter school in Manhattan has been conducting an experiment of sorts: How do students perform if teachers are paid $125,000 a year? The results so far at the Equity Project Charter School look promising, the Atlantic reports. The fifth- through eighth-graders slowly saw test scores rise over the period studied. Four years of math at the school showed results comparable to 5.6 years at another school with demographically similar students, Vox reports. In science and English, they gained an approximately an additional half-year's worth of learning over other kids, the Wall Street Journal reports. What's more, the score gap between white and Hispanic eighth-graders shrank by 78%, Vox notes. It isn't just the high pay that sets the school apart, however. The 480-student school, called TEP, hired highly experienced teachers who underwent a day of teaching "auditions." They have extensive administrative duties in a school that cut some standard administrative positions, and they must hold up to tough scrutiny to get rehired. Turnover ended up being high across a four-year period, the Atlantic notes, with 20 out of 43 teachers working for only one year. (At city middle schools, about 27% of teachers don't do a second year.) Also worth noting: Only 43% of eighth-graders at the school passed state math tests last year—but that beats the 26% rate across New York City, the Journal notes. (Another possible education solution: 13th grade?)