More on teacher pay

I continue to get pushback from my email a few weeks ago in which I said (and presented plenty of data) that teachers are not underpaid, adding: "I'm not against paying certain teachers more (math & science, those willing to teach in the toughest schools and, most importantly, those who really deliver high levels of student learning), but the main problem in our country is not that overall teacher pay is too low, it's how teachers are paid."

 

One friend wrote:

What entry salary for teachers do you think attracts quality?  And what should a four-year good teacher earn?  I have 2 fabulous colleagues (who moved student achievement) who left teaching because they couldn't afford to stay.  I think the salaries do matter if we want to attract and ultimately retain quality the scale we need.

I agree.  My thoughts on this topic are are virtually identical to what I wrote recently about spending more money in general (from my post on Newark's richly funded yet disastrous schools: http://edreform.blogspot.com/2007/04/horrifying-statistics-for-newarks-high.html):

Anyone ill-informed enough to think that pouring more money into a broken and dysfunctional school system will lead to improvement needs to look no further than New Jersey to see how wrong this is. If anything, more money without reform simply empowers and entrenches the catastrophic status quo.

To be clear: I am not advocating funding cuts for our schools. Precisely the opposite, in fact: our schools do need more money if it is properly spent in ways that truly benefit children. In addition, the practical reality is that additional funding is almost always necessary to grease the wheels of reform.

In summary, I'm adamantly opposed to paying teachers more if the extra money is simply poured into the current broken system, in which there's lockstep pay, with everything driven by seniority.  As Newark proves (the highest-paid teachers in the country, at $77,000/year on average), this does not result in higher teacher quality.  But, you will find no greater champion of higher teacher pay than me if it's accompanied by a sensible compensation system that attracts and rewards (both financially and in other ways) top performers.