Today’s Times features a slightly breathless story about the new Equity Project charter school in Washington Heights, which will pay teachers $125,000 when it opens next fall.  But six-figure teachers are not unprecedented in the Big Apple–or elsewhere in New York.

New York City alone had 7,379 teachers with base pay of over $100,000 in 2007-08, according to the searchable city payroll database available at SeeThroughNY.

For school districts in the rest of the state, the SeeThrough database lists 27,271 teachers and administrators–out of 264,022 total full- and part-time educational professionals–who earned more than $100,000 last year.  (Because the non-New York City school payroll data is from state Teacher Retirement System filings, SeeThroughNY does not have a breakout of teachers alone for 2007-08.)

The Equity Project charter school will also pay teachers bonuses of up to $25,000.  But most importantly, as noted far down in the Times article:

Teachers [at Equity Project] will not have the same retirement benefits as members of the city’s teachers’ union. And they can be fired at will.

In other words–like most other charter schools and many private schools, but unlike all regular public schools–the Equity Project has an affordable model designed to offer its teachers significant incentives and rewards for superior performance.  It will also have the freedom to quickly replace those who fail to perform.