DISD Superintendent Mike Miles was the keynote speaker this morning at the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce’s annual Education Forum. After detailing the progress of the 10 goals he set for the district when he took over nearly a year ago, Miles discussed a new initiative: With teachers’ help, he wants to create an evaluation system that ties educators’ compensation to their students’ achievement. He said 450 teachers are supposed to gather at Adamson High School on Monday to help craft such a system.
But Miles said he won’t bring such a system to the Board of Trustees if an underway survey doesn’t show that the community supports the idea of basing teachers’ paychecks on kids’ grades and test scores. “I’ve been through this before,” Miles said. “If the community doesn’t want it, it won’t work.”
The portion of the community that had just finished breakfast at the Doubletree on Central seemed to want it. The man sitting to my left, Bob Trice, punctuated a couple of Miles’ statements on the topic with “amen.” So I asked Trice if such a system had proven successful in his field.
“I work in insurance,” he said with a laugh. “What do you think?” Trice then went on to compare himself to a theoretical colleague: “If he brings in $100,000 worth of business to our company, and I bring in $1 million, which one of us should get paid more? I mean, duh.” Indeed.
