Comments on teacher pay

Going back to the discussion on teacher pay from a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to share these wise words from a friend who's one of the founders and board members of a charter school:

I think the right way to frame the teacher pay issue is that great teachers are woefully underpaid and mediocre teachers are way overpaid.

We would all be happy to pay more if it meant our kids would get better instruction.

The great thing about competition and charter schools is that it raises the pressure on schools to pay a premium (through pay, benefits and conditions) to attract the best teachers to their schools and into the profession.  I know that at our charter school we already pay more to attract teachers than the union contract demands, and this year we are raising that further.  And to attract a great principal we had to outbid another school, pushing up her salary by 40%! (well-deserved, by the way)

Here is the biggest irony of all: once schools can fire their bad teachers, it is going to create a severe shortage of good teachers, and salaries will ramp up naturally as bidding wars for talent erupt.  Principals and superintendents will be under pressure to use technology better and to cut bureaucracy and overhead so they can afford to pay up for the best teachers.  Mayors won’t be fighting the demands of teachers unions – they will be voluntarily spending more to compete.  I see this beginning to happen already at the charter school level.

It turns out that the net effect of unions has been to put a cap on the compensation for great teachers!  I look forward to the day (coming soon) when schools are bidding feverishly for great talent the way software companies and investment banks do today.