This author states her belief that there must be an answer to devising an effective and credible way to link compensation to professional development and improved teaching. Such a model would need to be transparent, equitable, and financially manageable for the school. It would need to marry objectivity with the art of teaching, and have buy-in from those participating in it. The faculty at her school, University Prep, started writing the "Characteristics of Good Teaching (CGT)." This comprehensive list was vaguely sorted into domains, but the content and focus more definitively reflected the mission and culture of the school. At the same time, over a period of two years, this group worked to escalate the responsibilities and enhance the skills of their department heads from peer representatives to administrative leaders who could gain the trust from their teaching colleagues as observers and evaluators. For the system to be equitable, success needed to be accessible to everyone regardless of his or her experience and education. They replaced the "degrees beyond the BA" column labels on their salary scale with "Individualized Teaching Improvement Plan (ITIP)" level, representing a different set of criteria that, unlike the advanced university credits, actually related to observable improvement as a teacher. The ITIP takes place over three years. At the beginning of Year One, teachers are encouraged, counseled, guided by their department chair and division director to select from the Characteristics of Good Teaching a small, specific area of focus. This should not be simply an area in their subject that interests them, but rather something that they (or their department chair) know is a challenge for them pedagogically, content-wise, or culturally. Each year's success is evaluated and signed off by the department chair, division director, and head of school. At the successful completion of the three-year cycle, the teacher moves over one column on the salary scale, and begins the ITIP process all over again. After the initial skepticism and inevitable design glitches, the responses and results have been remarkably positive. Teachers feel invested and in control of their professional development and recompense. Faculty members have begun to share their ITIP experiences with one another, and new cross-discipline appliances have formed.