This article discusses the city of Denver's poll on a new teacher-compensation plan. The poll showed those who had made up their minds to be about evenly divided, leaving more than 20 percent undecided. Proponents have been making the rounds at schools in recent weeks to try winning teachers over to their side. If members of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association end up favoring the proposal, they will have registered support for giving educators a choice between the current compensation system and the markedly different one that has been outlined. The framework, which would become part of the contract currently being negotiated, proposes to drop years in the classroom from the pay scale and give weight instead to a host of factors directly related to raising student achievement or finding teachers for hard-to-fill slots. That approach contrasts with the traditional pay system, used in Denver and across the nation, that bases salary on education attained and years of service. Proponents of the endeavor believe that a significant jump in teacher compensation is politically impossible without a change in the way teachers are paid, and they appear confident that Denver residents would support a tax increase that would add about $40 annually to the taxes for the average home if the new plan gets approval from the teachers. Most new pay plans elsewhere reward educators for schoolwide improvement on student tests or showing through reviews that they have new skills. The most common variation is to pay teachers in shortage subjects or high-poverty schools. The Denver initiative combines those elements and attempts to link individual teachers' efforts with academic progress made by their students.