Charter schools nationwide will be watching the results coming out of a New York City charter school in Washington Heights that will start paying its teachers a salary of $125,000 a year this coming fall. The school is something of a test case attempting to prove that high-quality teachers are the catalyst to improve a school system.

But here’s the hitch (as told by the NY Times)…

“In exchange for their high salaries, teachers at the new school, the Equity Project, will work a longer day and year and assume responsibilities that usually fall to other staff members, like attendance coordinators and discipline deans. To make ends meet, the school, which will use only public money and charter school grants for all but its building, will scrimp elsewhere.

The school will open with seven teachers and 120 students, most of them from low-income Hispanic families. At full capacity, it will have 28 teachers and 480 students. It will have no assistant principals, and only one or two social workers. Its classes will have 30 students. In an inversion of the traditional school hierarchy that is raising eyebrows among school administrators, the principal will start off earning just $90,000. In place of a menu of electives to round out the core curriculum, all students will take music and Latin. Period.”

An interesting concept.  Decatur’s charter school plan hasn’t proposed anything so dramatic, but does offer merit pay to teachers.