CHICAGO — Eighty-two Chicago Public School principals received the first crop of performance pay rewards Monday as a part of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago Leadership Collaborative.
Seventy-two elementary school principals and 10 high school principals received $5,000, $10,000 or $20,000 rewards based on growth in four student success measures: college readiness, graduation rate, test scores and narrowing of the achievement gap, according to a press release.
The Chicago Leadership Collaborative was announced last November, and the funds came from $5 million in private donations for the five-year program. The initiative also provides training and more personalized mentoring for principals from chiefs of schools, the release stated.
“We hold our principals accountable for the gains or losses our students are making within their schools,” Emanuel said in a statement. “Providing the training, support and resources our principals need to help our students thrive goes hand-in-hand with rewarding those with outstanding results.”
The initiative is part of several efforts across the city to link performance and accountability. City Colleges of Chicago announced in September new contracts with full-time faculty that allowed up to 1 percent of salary to be linked to student success outcomes, the release stated.
Merit pay was also a part of the agreement between CPS and the Chicago Teachers Union that ended the seven-day strike in September.