3.8 Pay Teachers Competitively
Teacher pay is by far the largest component of the cost of operating a school. People choose to become teachers for many reasons, but getting rich is not among them. As a job, teaching is steady, secure, middle-class work.
In decades long past, teaching was once perceived as a relatively lucrative profession for women, whose professional options were constrained. This premium has evaporated. Since about 1980, teacher pay has lagged comparable employment for both men and women.
Relative to other nations, pay for teachers in America is low. The following graph is based on OECD 2010 data, presented in Building a High-Quality Teaching Profession: Lessons from Around the World.
Teachers in virtually all American public schools are compensated according to a rigidly defined “single salary schedule.” If you know the number of years a teacher has worked in a district (“step”) and the number of postgraduate credits the teacher has completed (“column”), you can determine his or her pay.
The good news is that the widespread use of a single salary schedule has reduced or even erased discriminatory pay practices related to gender and ethnicity. Paired with the teacher pension system (the State Teacher Retirement System, STRS), the salary schedule also has created strong “stay-put” incentives. Seniority is generally counted in terms of the number of years a teacher has worked in a specific district. Changing districts resets the teacher’s seniority – a significant economic disincentive. This makes teachers inclined to stay with a district, even if it is a tough place to work.
The bad news is that the single salary schedule system is indifferent to expertise, effectiveness, and market conditions. Teachers earn the same regardless of whether they teach effectively or ineffectively, whether they teach a subject that requires general knowledge or specialized knowledge, whether they teach many children or a handful, and whether or not they bring out the best in their colleagues.
Many districts offer a salary increase to teachers that obtain a master’s degree. (See “3.2 Prepare and Certify Teachers” above.)
In the past few years a growing number of voices have argued that major changes to the salary schedule should be “on the table” in district and union dialogue about strategies for change.
Reforms related to teacher pay revise the salary schedule (or replace it altogether) in order to change the incentive structure. (See puzzle graphic for examples.) All elements of an alternative compensation (altcomp) program are controversial, but none more so than performance pay.
Federal programs have offered competitive grants to accelerate adoption of alternative teacher pay systems, particularly performance pay systems. Under the Bush Administration, the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) committed several hundred million dollars to support programs that include a performance pay component. Under the Obama Administration, the much larger Race to the Top (RTT) and School Improvement Fund (SIF) programs also provided support for alternative compensation plans in schools with high concentrations of low-income students.
Many businesspeople regard it as self-evident that teacher pay should vary with performance. In 2009 Daniel Pink brought attention to the motivational risks of pay for performance in his bestseller Drive: the Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us. The heart of Pink’s thesis is that intrinsic motivation comes from a desire to achieve mastery, autonomy, and purpose. He presents evidence that conditional pay incentives can actually interfere with that drive.
Evaluation of pay-for-performance trials so far have not shown widespread results in terms of student learning gains, but the results appear to vary according to program design. A study of schools using the most prominent alternative compensation system, TAP, documented significant student learning gains. As more alternative compensation experiments come online through the TIF, RTT and SIF programs, there will be plenty of opportunities to learn from experience.
The profession of teaching is one of the most noble and dignifying callings anyone could consider. Compensation starts with the joy and satisfaction that comes from increasing the opportunities your students will have as they grow and is closely followed by the satisfation that comes from working with stunning colleagues. Does financial compensation matter? Absolutely. A teacher’s ability to earn a family sustaining income, live a comfortable life and help support the futures of their own children is an aspiration every teacher should achieve.
If we consider the facts that some subject areas like math, sciences and special education have enormous teacher shortages and that there are schools where many students have been traditionally underserved then addressing these needs with additional compensation is both logical and appropriate. It is also appropriate to recognize the value that a teacher adds to his or her students in the areas of intellectual, personal and social development. Outcomes matter both in terms of value to the studenmts and value to one’s colleagues and the positive culture and climate at the school.
The challenge is how to do it in a fair and consistent manner. It is a challenge worth accepting knowing that more often than not the concept of fairness emerges locally rather than nationally. We must find ways to honor and recognize highly effective teachers and find incentives to have them continue to bring their talents and inspiration to youth for many years. I believe those incentives are a combination of an increased base compensation, incentive compensation for preparation, assignment and performance with a stroing nod towards insuring that they interact always with stunning colleagues and an effective and inspiring principal.
TAP: The System for Teacher and Student Advancement is a comprehensive school reform that is reaching nearly 20,000 teachers and 200,000 students across the country. TAP is comprised of four essential elements that are Aligned by Design–one of which is a performance pay component. Along with career opportunities for advancement, a fair and transparent evaluation system and job-embedded professional development, teachers are able to earn more for their demonstrated performance. Teachers who take on additional roles and responsibilities are compensated accordingly, while all teachers in TAP schools are eligible for annual bonuses based on multiple performance measures including classroom observation scores, individual and school wide student achievement growth. As noted in your other sections, TAP also recognizes that we need to attract, retain, develop and motivate the most talented individuals for the teaching profession. Data show that TAP addresses the intrinsic motivation of teachers to strive for excellence and effectiveness, and results in a high degree of faculty collegiality, thus proving that pay for performance is compatible with these values when it is an integral part of a well-designed support system. The comprehensive implementation of TAP has proven to improve teacher effectiveness and student achievement. The paper linked above, as well as additional research outcomes can be found at http://www.tapsystem.org/publications/tap_research_summary_0210.pdf.
The teaching profession needs to make dramatic changes in order to ensure that the most effective teachers are in our classrooms. TAP provides an opportunity to make the changes necessary to improve teacher quality and student learning for all children.
I was a long time proponent of paying teachers for performance before reading through Daniel Pink’s book and am now a complete convert to the other side.
Daniel’s book goes into great detail about how the mechanisms of incentive pay are one of the best known topics in social science but despite this, business generally completely ignores the discoveries. The basic gist is that incentive pay works extraordinarily well for simple straightforward “factory line” or repetitive task type work and fails miserably when the task (in this case teaching a class of students over long periods of time) is complicated and complex in nature.
What’s the solution when you can’t use incentive pay? Mastery, Autonomy & Purpose. The words almost define themselves, but I believe that a closer look can illuminate more of what is going on in the profession of teaching.
Mastery is the process of getting really good at something. One interesting component of mastery as defined in the book is that it does not have have an end point. So for teachers to have mastery in their job, it has to be structured in a way that there are consistently places where teachers can improve what they do. One example where this is done well is at Summit Prep (one of the Waiting for Superman schools) where teachers get 20 professional development days a year, and here is the kicker: the teacher decides how to use this time and they can do so in any way they want. This brings us to the next concept: autonomy.
Autonomy is simply the ability to control your own destiny, or at least parts of it. When teacher contracts are extremely restrictive, it reduces the ability for the teacher to have autonomy (e.g. choosing how and where they improve their ability as a teacher). So one perfectly worthwhile substitute to teacher pay would be to look at restructuring teacher contracts to give them more flexibility in their work on a day to day and month to month basis.
Purpose is knowing that what you do has meaning. Thus Daniel Pink’s book suggests that the more we can set up a teacher’s workplace so that he or she can focus on students instead of bureaucracy and administration, the less we have to worry as much about teacher pay because the “purpose” component of a teacher’s job will shine brighter and thus increase their intrinsic motivation.
This is what I learned from reading Daniel Pink’s Drive and relating it to teacher compensation.
Peter Kuperman
Outreach Coordinator at Khan Academy
Full Circle Member, Education Circle
Thanks, Peter. Pink’s book has been helpful at improving the caliber of conversation about the practical complications and limitations of money as a performance incentive. There are real risks involved, especially if big chunks of pay are made conditional.
My own perspective on this matter has evolved over time.
First of all, remember that performance incentives are but ONE of the puzzle pieces in the diagram above. They are ONE of the elements of TAP.
Schools operate in multiple labor markets, but only succeed in some of them. For example, schools are at a great disadvantage when recruiting for awesome teachers with great knowledge in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). Making these positions more highly compensated seems to me part of a solution.
Second, I suspect (but cannot prove) that political support for education funding would be greater if the public could believe that the system is set up to connect pay with outcomes. In this view, performance pay isn’t just about creating incentives for teaching, but about creating incentives for taxpayers.
Third, I believe that the system will NEVER provide teachers with meaningful professional evaluation and feedback unless there is a bona fide reason to spend some money on getting it right. Today’s evaluation systems for teachers are generally useless, toothless, and ignored. If there were some money at stake in these evaluations, they would still be awful, but they would at least HAPPEN, and could no longer be ignored. Within a few painful years, the evaluations would be improved — and no longer useless. It might also speed up the thinking about what “multiple measures” ought to mean. Many businesses that are serious about improvement (rather than just weeding out the worst) make significant investments in giving their employees professional feedback. Teachers deserve the same professional regard.
I would say it differently. I don’t think the public is happy with paying under performing teachers less. I think the concern is ensuring the public school system employs teachers who are actively working at mastering teaching. Which means a lot more than just test score results.
In 2011 the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) surveyed Californians about their attitudes toward teacher pay with the following finding: “Most Californians say a teacher’s salary should be very closely tied to student achievement (29%) or somewhat closely tied (40%). Solid majorities across regions and parties (69% independents, 68% Republicans, 65% Democrats) say the two should be closely tied. Among racial and ethnic groups, Latinos (75%) are the most likely and blacks the least likely (56%) to say so.” (See page 5 in linked document) http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/survey/S_411MBS.pdf
In late 2011 The Atlantic published a summary of four studies on the question “Are Teachers paid too much” http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/11/are-teachers-paid-too-much-how-4-studies-answered-1-big-question/247872/