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The teachers, administrators and staffers who educate the children of Bellaire will receive over $1.7 million in bonuses today because their students have shown vast academic growth from year to year.

Bellaire High School received the highest total bonus amount compared to any other Houston-area high school.

Bellaire High School is receiving the highest amount of any Houston high school, and three educators at Pin Oak Middle School will receive top awards — over $10,000 each.

Across the HISD area, 15,688 teachers, principals and staff received performance pay totaling $40.4 million for helping children improve in the classroom. This exceeds last year’s payout by approximately $8.8 million, according to an HISD statement.

The amounts going to Bellaire schools are as follows:

• Condit Elementary — $213,517 (29th highest for elementary schools)
• Gordon Elementary — $43,031 (152nd highest for elementary schools)
• Horn Elementary — $143,230 (67th highest for elementary schools)
• Pin Oak Middle School — $416,692 (5th highest for middle schools)
• Bellaire High School — $948,075 (highest amount of any high school)

Among principals who received some award, amounts ranged from $240 to $15,530 with an average award of $6,124. The largest bonus paid to any one teacher is $10,890 with an average award of $3,606.

Three educators from Pin Oak Middle School were rewarded very high bonuses:

• John Gomez, history teacher, $10,560
• Christiana Ichara, science teacher, $10,080
• Daryl Grantham, science teacher, $10,080

“These bonuses are a testament to the high quality staff we have on our campuses,” said Superintendent Terry Grier in a statement. “The students are winners as well because our data shows they are making notable academic gains from year to year.”

The performance pay program is part of ASPIRE (Accelerating Student Progress Increasing Results & Expectations), HISD’s school improvement strategy. The program measures teacher and school impact on student academic progress from year to year using both achievement data and value added analysis.

The ASPIRE awards program model divides growth into four groups known as quartiles. There was significant growth in all the quartiles for the 2008-2009 school year. Of the 270 HISD campuses with value added scores, 224 (83 percent) had statistically significant growth across all grades and subjects.

HISD launched the teacher performance pay program in January 2007 as a way of identifying and rewarding teachers for strong academic growth by children and as a tool for recruiting and retaining the best teachers. Since 2007, HISD has awarded over $113 million in teacher performance pay.