Time to Pay Up: Teacher Compensation Needs Reform

I’m well into my third year teaching in Memphis, and by most measures I’d say I’ve been pretty successful.  I’ve consistently earned high marks on my evaluations and met or exceeded expected student growth in both my first two years.  I also help coach my school’s debate team and am rewriting the geometry curriculum from scratch.  I have many young colleagues who can make similar statements.

I love teaching, and like most educators I’m not in it for the money.  But it’s frustrating to know that despite this, the standard metric for pay is still years of service rather than individual effectiveness.  When I look at other professions such as law, business and medicine, they pay their professionals according to their accomplishments and performance.  I see no reason why teaching should be different.

Failing to acknowledge teacher effectiveness through compensation leads to at best dissatisfied educators and at worse, strong educators who leave the profession.  I know many young teachers who have left the classroom in recent years, and while compensation is one reason on a list of many, it is one of those few that can be directly and easily addressed through policy.  If we want to attract the best and brightest to the education profession, it’s essential that educators’ pay reflects their achievement.

This idea has received more attention from our leaders in recent years.  Kaya Henderson in Washington, DC and Kevin Huffman in Tennessee are two examples of leaders who have sought to couple teacher pay to effectiveness.  Even the unions are getting on board.  Last month, Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, publicly declared that he believes it is time to move away from the traditional step and lane salary increases that see teacher salaries go up by fixed amounts each and every year.

Just as with any idea, there are many different structures that can be used to reward teachers for their effectiveness as educators.  Some districts, notably Washington DC, now reward individual educators with dramatic salary increases if they can demonstrate student growth over several years.  Other districts might consider a career ladder approach which increases teachers’ pay in concert with increased responsibility.

The elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about is the question of how to fund these compensation systems.  In the US, educator salaries current add up to $591 billion, representing a significant piece of our public expenditures.  Enacting systems like those I’ve outlined within this current funding context would create dog-eat-dog competition among educators, which would further degrade the profession.

Clearly, we will need to figure out how to increase the available share of the pie to fund these measures.  The obvious answer for how to do this is to raise the taxes necessary to support these systems and ensure teacher compensation truly rewards teacher quality.  Raising taxes isn’t a popular move in our political system today, but it is imperative that we do so to ensure that these systems are fully funded.  The best evaluation system or student growth measures are useless if we can’t keep good teachers in the classroom.

In areas where taxes are already high and increases aren’t an option, policy makers could find the money by working to shift money from other areas less proven to promote student achievement.  For example, districts across the country spend millions to introduce laptops, tablets and smart boards into classrooms.  However, research suggests that an effective teacher is the most consistent predictor of student outcomes.  With this in mind, policy makers might consider shifting these millions from technology to focusing on educators.  Shifting around funding within education budgets requires difficult conversations, but when we take into account the research that demonstrates the impact of the classroom teacher, it seems imperative that we shift funding to support strategies that reward highly effective teachers everywhere.

I’m glad that our leaders are beginning to recognize the need to reward educators for their effectiveness.  But such recognition won’t reach its full potential until it works its way into our compensation system. Until we take this step, effective educators everywhere will continue to be frustrated with a profession that pays lip service to the importance of teacher effectiveness, but fails to actually reward it.