A small New York City charter school opened five years ago with an attention-grabbing premise: Paying teachers $125,000 salaries would lure ace faculty and help poor children learn. 
 
 A new study of the middle school, called The Equity Project, suggests that the experiment is working. The report to be released Friday by Mathematica Policy Research said the school’s students made more progress than similar children attending traditional... ||||| It's common to hear that teachers should be paid better — more like doctors and lawyers. In 2009, the Equity Project, a charter school in New York decided to try it: they would pay all their teachers $125,000 per year with the possibility of an additional bonus. 
 
 The typical teacher in New York with five years' experience makes between $64,000 and $76,000. The charter school, known as TEP, would pay much more. But in exchange, teachers, who are not unionized, would accept additional responsibilities, and the school would keep a close eye on their work. 
 
 Four years later, students at TEP score better on state tests than similar students elsewhere. The differences were particularly pronounced in math, according to a study from Mathematica Policy Research released in October. (The study was funded by the Gates Foundation.) After four years at the school, students had learned as much math as they would have in 5.6 years elsewhere: 
 
 (Mathematica Policy Research) 
 
 The gains erased 78 percent of the achievement gap between Hispanic students and whites in the eighth grade. 
 
 The results are important in part because TEP also appears to have sidestepped some common concerns about charter schools. They didn't expel or suspend students out of school in the first four years. There is no evidence that the school encouraged problem students to leave or transfer on their own. And the students who attended were roughly as likely to be low-income, and to have had similar levels of academic achievement before they arrived. They could still differ in other ways — they could have more involved parents, who get them into the charter school lottery, for example — but TEP doesn't present some of the obvious factors that help explain other charter schools' success. 
 
 How TEP hired and trained teachers 
 
 The $125,000 number was eye-catching, but it was just the start of the school's approach to teaching. Teachers were also eligible for a bonus of between 7 to 12 percent of their salary. The teachers, who are not unionized, went through a rigorous selection process that included a daylong "audition" based on their teaching skills. The typical teacher already had six years of classroom experience before they were hired. 
 
 Teachers at TEP also get more time to collaborate and played a bigger role in school decision-making than teachers in other jobs. Teachers were paired up to observe each others' lessons and provide feedback, collaboration that experts agree is important but happens too infrequently. During a six-week summer training, teachers also helped set school policy. 
 
 The workload at TEP, where teachers also take on administrative duties and had an average of 31 students per class, is fairly heavy even with the extra pay. But the school also had more teacher turnover than usual. Nearly half of first-year teachers didn't return for their second year, either because they resigned or because they were not rehired. Teacher turnover has been found to have a slight effect on student achievement. 
 
 Overall, though, the results are promising. The researchers caution that this is just one study of a small school. It's not meant to prove that TEP's methods can work in every school nationally. But it appears to suggest that, at least, the approach worked at one school. ||||| 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.) Even the principal would earn less than the teachers to ensure that the school would be able to rely only on public funding, other than the cost of the school facility and its technology system. 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. 
 
 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. A pretty low number, though a considerable improvement compared with the 26% city-wide pass rate. Another big difference with the Equity Project, aside from the outsize salaries, is that the school looks for experienced teachers—the median teaching experience was 6 years—compared with charter schools that tend to recruit young teachers with less experience. But the Equity Project’s teachers are still relative newbies compared to surrounding public schools, which have a median teaching experience of 13 years. More From Quartz How Cable News Changes the Way Americans Vote 
 
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 This Backpack Designed for Poor Kids Does so Much More Than Carry Books The Equity Project’s inclusive strategy meant that teachers became a big part of the school and developing curricula—there was no assistant principal for the first two years, and teachers are very much a part of the student disciplinary process. For example, one form of punishment for a student who speaks disrespectfully to a teacher is for that student to spend the whole day with the teacher. It also means, though, that the teachers are working more than they might at another school.
– 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?)