It may seem like a crazy proposition, but there is no reason why we shouldn't have a pay for performance system that allows our exceptional teachers to earn a salary that is competitive and demonstrates our value for best in class educators.
This weekend, our former Nevada State Superintendent, Jim Guthrie, proposed this very idea as a possible solution for turning around K-12 in Nevada.
The Review Journal ran the article and here's an excerpt:
The problem: All Nevada teachers receive the same base pay as others in their district, regardless of performance, receiving automatic raises for seniority and earning extra college credits, but nothing for performance, offering “little incentive to excel,” he writes.
That’s the opposite of the private sector, where top-level lawyers, engineers and other professionals make $200,000 for being the best, he said.
The proposal: Pay Nevada’s top 2,000 educators $200,000 each, which is about twice what the state’s highest-paid teachers currently make.
Paying all of Nevada’s 20,000 teachers that much would cost about $2 billion, but paying that much to just top-level teachers would cost $200 million.
Yes, this is an expensive proposition, but so is the cost of replacing exceptional teachers who leave the classroom to pursue other positions for increased earning potential. I also think the step and column pay structure is an outdated compensation system. I appreciate the value placed on tenure in the current structure, but I think we need to pay our best teachers a higher wage.
Here's another article from Nicholas Kristof that ran in the NYTimes in March. He cites a study from McKinsey that found that 47 percent of America’s kindergarten through 12th-grade teachers come from the bottom one-third of their college classes (as measured by SAT scores). I know we more than our SAT scores (I didn't even take the SAT), but as recent as the 1960s, our teachers used to come from the top third of their college classes. That's a major shift in just a few decades.
In addition, Eric A. Hanushek of Stanford University wrote a report titled, The Economic Value of Higher Teacher Quality. He found that an excellent teacher raises each student’s lifetime earnings by $20,000. This sounds like a viable economic solution to me. The most striking finding of his study is his assertion that "replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers could move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings with a present value of $100 trillion" of student future learning. These numbers are staggering and demand real consideration.
I think we should live in a world where great teachers aren't martyrs and have every opportunity to thrive financially while dramatically changing the lives of their students.
