Washington state education reformers want to change the way teachers are paid to include incentives for tough assignments, expertise and classroom performance. The Washington Learns report is controversial, writes Dan Goldhaber and Michael DeArmond of University of Washington’s Center for Reinventing Public Education.
Many people will argue the problem with teacher salaries is that they are too low to attract and keep good teachers. That may be true. But the types of pay reforms outlined by Washington Learns recognize a deeper problem: the failure of the current system to make distinctions among teachers who have specialized skills, who accept difficult job assignments, or who are more effective in the classroom.
Washington state now offers a $5,000 bonus to teachers who work in a high-poverty school and another $5,000 for national board certification.
Dallas has discovered that it takes a hefty bonus to lure proven teachers to high-need schools, reports the Dallas News.
Recognizing that good teachers can make a world of difference, the Dallas school district tried to lure its best educators into its neediest schools this year by offering them $6,000 in annual bonuses.
Few appear to have taken the bait. District records show that only about 65 teachers switched to the 16 struggling schools that were approved to give the bonuses.
Nearly 200 of the teachers getting a bonus aren’t experienced, successful teachers. They’re brand-new to the district and most are new to teaching.
At the last minute, the district expanded the program to include new hires and strong teachers already on a school’s staff. A total of 526 educators wound up getting the bonuses, for a total expenditure of about $3.2 million.
The News also found a veteran kindergarten teacher who qualified for the bonus by becoming a high school English teacher.
Researcher Eric Hanushek, who worked with the Texas Schools Project in 2004, says most teachers wouldn’t switch to a high-poverty school for a few thousand dollars. It would take a bonus equal to 45 percent of their base pay — about $20,000 for mid-career teachers. School climate, student behavior and the quality of principals are more important than money in motivating teachers to stay or switch schools.
In the District of Columbia, surprise bonuses were awarded to principals, teacher and support staff at three elementary schools that raised test scores by more than 20 percent.
Principals of the three schools received $10,000, while teachers got $8,000 each. Librarians and counselors were given $4,000. But the educators weren’t the only ones to get recognized. The schools’ support staffs and custodians each received $2,000.
Most of the award money came from the U.S. Education Department; the rest was raised by a nonprofit, New Leaders for New Schools.
Update: EdSource has lots of data on teacher pay and benefits in California school districts.
One of my big complaints about teacher pay is the absolutley rigid salary structure, that gives no credit for such thngs as life and work experience. I did not decide to enter teaching until I was 28, and did not get my first job until I was 33. So here I am ten years later, a 42 year old teacher, earning the salary of a 32 year old teacher. Before teaching I held a variety of jobs, which has provided me with knowledge, skills and experiences that I have shared with my students. I worked for a law firm, did sales, sports bar promotion. Now, I am not saying I should be given years of service credit for all of that, but I think that would be worth a few clicks up the pay scale. The law expereince came in handy when I taught government and history, and now I teach eco. so the management and sales come into play. About six years ago a colleague of mine gave up a job as a petroleum engineer to teach AP Physics. He gave up a 100+K salary in order to start at 33,000 like any other 22 year old teacher fresh out of A&M or UT. In a needed field he brought a wealth of knowledge and experience to a needed field. He should have received some sort of financial bonus for that!
It’s really unlikely that a teacher who is currently experiencing success at a strong school with good leadership will leave that school to go to a school that is universally acknowledged as terrible. Even 45% more pay (which as far as I know, no one is offering) is really only attractive if you are at a stage of your career when you know it’s for a finite number of years, like the last three credible years before retirement, maybe.
Anyone who has previously taught at a “challenging” school and moved to a better school is even less likely to go. Essentially, you’re going to move from a job that’s primarily teaching students with some interest in learning to a job that’s predominantly social work and prison warden, not to mention that the dysfunction of the school board and building level administrators will seem a little like the Ministries of Truth and Love in 1984.
Yeah, good luck with that.
Money can’t buy happiness or satisfaction.
Gotta say, NDC, as someone who intentionally chose to work at a school you label “challenging,” (100% FRL, 90% 2nd language) the gross characterization of my job as that of “social worker and prison warden” is pretty offensive. Apathy is, at best, evenly distributed across socioeconomic levels, if not more heavily weighted toward the higher end, where pre-existing basic skills and the inertia of upper middle class will result in success. Talk to any teacher at a “challenging” school possessed of baseline competence and they’ll tell you how powerfully and incredibly kids respond, how much they want to learn, how much they understand that the pursuit of any type of future is predicated on what they do in the classroom. The reason narratives and points of view such as your persist — in contrast to the reality many of us experience — is the prevalence of teachers in “challenging” schools who lack that baseline competence, fail, nad spew reports of their failure across our popular notions of what’s going on.
I think increased funding exists as the last necessary straw to bring folks to these classrooms. That, and a more honest assessment of what it takes to be successful, and why success has proved elusive in the past. What’s not needed is crap about the job being essentially a prison warden.
“School climate, student behavior and the quality of principals are more important than money in motivating teachers to stay or switch schools.”
So true, so true, so true, so true.
I make about 70K a year. For 10K more, I’d work at a poverty school if the principal was good and if the system empowered the teachers. Otherwise, they’d have to pay me 30K more.
I’m the reporter who authored the Dallas Morning News story. I read Bob’s comment, “One of my big complaints about teacher pay is the absolutley rigid salary structure, that gives no credit for such things as life and work experience.” You may be interested to hear, Bob, that the new Dallas HR czar envisions a day when all district teachers make a base of $50k, with a shot at earning up to $75,000 through a series of incentives, performance bonuses and extra-duty pay. That might have some appeal in a district where last year, only about 115 classroom teachers topped $69,000, while nearly 4,300 made less than $50,000. District folks think such a salary structure would be a big draw for talented new teachers who generally get stuck on the low end of the salary schedule.
TMOA, how many demographically similar schools have you taught at? I think, based on having read your blog, that you are at a school with a much better than average administration for the demographic and that alone makes huge difference. You’re also at a middle school if I remember correctly, maybe even an elementary, which I think would be a world of difference anyway.
I, who like to regard myself as possessing at least baseline competency, taught for two years at one school that was moderately dysfunctional and did teaching internships as I got certified to teach at two others. There’s no way that I would return to something similar. And I stand by the idea that it was much more an institutional problem and much less a teacher competency one although very few competent teacher are going to stay in a dysfunctional environment very long if they want to teach a subject area or discipline at the high school level and have other options.
Have you taught at a school with a different demographic to compare your experience? Sure, more affluent kids have their issues, but I think generally apathy is much lower because most of the kids buy in to the idea of academic achievement and maybe even the fun of learning and knowing stuff.
I want to clarify that when I referred to the “prison warden” aspect I was thinking mainly in terms of corralling people and doing crowd control with a group of people not really disposed to share your sense of purpose rather than accusing all the kids at challenging schools of basically being criminals. But I do think there’s more crime at crappy schools too.
Two math teachers with the same qualifications work in a public high school. One is assigned to teach higher level math to the “stepford” students…you know, the ones who practice cryptography for fun, and create artificial languages where they communicate in prime numbers. The other teacher is assigned the “general math” classes where the rooms become a dumping ground for disenchanted counselors, behavioral intervention councils and children with IEPs. Here’s the punchline: They both get paid the same.
Which one do you think would voluntarily accept a reduced paycheck to work in a private school? Which one do you think would support a program that offered a monetary incentive for working in a “cell block” environment?
And I guess I want to add that I’ve got no problem with incentive pay for harder to staff schools. I just think the price to actually attract successful teachers from good schools is going to be a lot higher than most incentive figures that get thrown around.
What would it take for other readers to be willing to work at the middle school linked in the story below this one about how a dangerous school can still get an A on its report card?
Mike Curtis,
I think they’d both support incentives for working in a tougher environment, but only the second would actually consider taking a job that offered one.
Teaching loads within schools is one of the most problematic aspects of reforming teacher pay.
Only growth model measurements seem to attach the incentives the right way.
In São Paulo State, Brazil, there are a 25% bonus for teachers working in impoverished areas. And there is still lack of teachers in these areas and surplus of them in wealthier districts…
NDC,
Nuff respect on previous, unfortunate metaphors. To answer your question, outside of a summer school job in the South Bronx, I’ve only taught at one school. But if experience of a different demographic is required to make comparions, I lived, K-12, the other side. Apathy is evenly distributed. Higher income kids are just more willing to play the game.
That said, the reason folks tend to leave under-performing, high-need urban schools is because so many people work there BEFORE they’ve figured out how to be an effective, successful teacher. The progression towards competency is difficult enough, made only more rigorous when attempted in a low-income urban school. We need to embrace measures that reverse the trend of experience leaving schools like this. Experience and skill need to flow in, not out. People should figure out how to teach in the suburbs, and then bring those skills to urban schools with a shortened learning curve and strong, past experiences to call on.
You argue people will not do this. I disagree. As a small example, take a look at the Oakland City Teacher Corps (an organization I’ve worked for). In its first two years OCTC recruited and supported over 75 teachers with non- high-need urban ed exprience to work in Oakland. These are people with credentials, jobs, and experience in places that look and feel nothing like Oakland, who are willing to leave to work in an extraordinarily demanding environment. Their reasons are myriad, but they’re doing it, even in the absence of additional funding.
Again, flip the narrative of how *those kids* approach schooling, quell the rhetoric of hopelessness and dysfunction, demonstrate to folks how much they’re needed, pay em more, and watch what happens. More than anything, it’s human capital *those schools* and *those kids* lack.
TMAO,
It’s not “those kids” that would prevent me from making the switch as much as it’s the school culture and incompetent administrators up to the school board level. If OCTC provides enough support to diminish the influence of bad school culture and working for morons, then it’s a totally different situation.
(Take a look at Clayton County Schools in Georgia; I think google will have some stories of the kind of crap I mean. There’s pretty much no amount of money they could pay that would bring people who had other options in, I don’t think.)
I think that we just see the job pretty differently. I can’t say I’m honestly in it to transform society by restructuring inner city school culture. I want to provide discipline specific knowledge and skills to the kids I teach. It’s actually a hard enough job without additional challenges of having the school work against your efforts through mismanagement.
And although I think “those kids” are important and I’d be happy to see incentives to attracted better teachers for them, I don’t see the day ever arriving when we can rely on a steady stream of people willing to leave good teaching situations to risk the possibility of misery at schools that teachers seem to flee. I hope I’m wrong though.
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/clayton/stories/2007/11/28/clayinvest_1129_web.html
I realized that just googling wouldn’t get you to the stories I meant.
Basically, the system is facing loss of accreditation for the second time in five years because their board of education can’t act right.
Additionally and unrelated to the accreditation issues, when they needed to hire an interim superintendent, they elected to promote a high school principal who had previous ethics violations at her middle school job for giving out copies of standardized tests, which she was supposed to keep under lock and key until they were administered, to teachers and instructing them to teach the material on the test. Now, she’s leading the district. (and one of the complaints about the board is that they paid for a bodyguard for her at school district events who was under investigation for child molestation when he was a school resource officer in the county. It’s a real quality operation.)
I can imagine circumstance I suppose, like state take over of the district, that might allow for the kind of reform that is needed. But a pay raise isn’t going to get too many people to apply to the CCPS, especially if they are successfully teaching elsewhere.
Apathy is evenly distributed. Higher income kids are just more willing to play the game.
But what a difference that makes!
Bit late to this party, but here’s something worth looking at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/22/AR2007122201846.html?hpid=topnews
Millions of dollars spent for what? To try to teach these punks – sorry, these disadvantaged, oppressed, attitudinally-challenged shining hopes for our future – that it isn’t quite the done thing to (a) knock a teacher unconscious, (b) that it isn’t cool to smoke dope in the hallways, (c) that school is a serious business?
Sorry, forgot to say that the teachers are only part of the equation; students and parents have a part to play as well.
Of course money will fix things, won’t it? See:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/20/AR2007122002334.html?hpid=sec-education&sid=ST2007122002543
NDC and Ragnarok,
You both illustrate the point I’m trying to make. An influx of talented human capital is clearly needed. What does talent respond to? Challenge and money. The challenge exists, although it is poorly articulated and frequently misconstrued. The money? Methinks the tide turns.
And yes, money has been spent before, but in this way? Has funding in education ever targeted talent? Have we invested in the individuals — on all levels of the system — with the capacity to function at high levels? Have we rewarded them when they exceed expectations? We’re not talking about poorly conceived curriculum, lame trainings, or some fad program. Spend money on people, spend it on the people who know how to do this work well. Reward them when they do the work exceptionally. If for no other reason, do this because it might represent that one last thing that hasn’t yet been tried.
No, TMAO, I disagree.
As I’ve said in the past, K-12 teaching requires an ability to handle kids, plus an average ability to understand what they teach. This a very low bar; even high-school math and science teachers don’t need to know much, though some clearly do.
This isn’t a case where you need to pay high salaries to attract “top talent” (disgusting cliche!). This is a case in which you have to put your nose to the grindstone and work, understanding that in most cases the work isn’t glamorous, but that it can be an honourable and rewarding calling. It is in many countries, even though the pay is fairly low.
Less money would probably help, because it might drive away some of the parasites – book publishers, “consultants”, ed-school professionals, among others – who now infest the system.
I think the environment being stable and supportive matters a great deal. I think talented people want a chance to use their talents rather than have their talents diminished by factors beyond their control.
Sure paying more money to strong teachers sounds like a great place to start, but unless the schools have an equally strong administration and a school climate that supports teachers with high expectations, I don’t think it’s going to make much difference in attracting people.
I certainly think the money going into to bad school needs to be refocused. Some of the most expensive districts are the least effective, and very little of the money is being spent on teaching and on supplies used directly with the kids.
NDC said:
“…but unless the schools have an equally strong administration and a school climate that supports teachers with high expectations…”
AND parents who care about their kids’ education, as well as a culture that respects learning.
Both are largely absent.
Again, Ragnarok and NDC, you prove my point.
Because yes, there are many cases where parents are unable to turn their caring into a tangible influence on their kids’ education, and yes, there are environments where survival trumps education, where education has been devalued, where education has been so long divorced from the concept of daily (or not) school attendance, that to conflate the two at this late date is all but absurd.
You’re telling me we don’t need more talented people to work in just those areas? You’re telling me that talent is not needed in just those communities? You’re telling me that people who like kids and understand algebra possess the necessary skill sets to produce results in the places where everything pulls away from success?
Yeah, not so much.
Because that’s what we’re talking about. Not how to make things better for the suburbs. Screw em. I don’t disagree with your sketchy generalization of necessary teacher skills Ragnarok, provided those hypothetical individuals teach in one of those places where every external factor pulls up, toward success. In those places, your outline of a teacher is sufficient. Everywhere else, not even close. This is the lesson of TFA. This is the lesson of TNTP’s Fellows programs. These learnings need to be extended outside the insular world of alternative certification programs.