| What do teachers make? According to various sources, teachers earn a median salary that is in the $40-50,000 range; for 2007, the American Federation of Teachers reported that respondents to its survey reported an salaries greater than $50,000 for the first time ever. Of course, salaries vary according to location, qualifications, and assignments. Sources: American Federation of Teachers; Payscale; US Bureau of Labor Statistics |
I’m a fan of paying teachers way higher salaries than most receive now. I’m wary of tying compensation directly to student test scores, but some connections between the two are probably warranted. The Equity Project (TEP) has taken a different tack on doing so. TEP hopes to lure teachers who have been selected for something akin to effectiveness by paying high salaries.
Elissa Gootman of the New York Times covered TEP in a story entitled “Next Test: Value of $125,000-a-Year Teachers.” TEP is an ambitious effort to create a school where pre- and early-adolescent students receive instruction from selected because of the putative quality of their teaching. The aim is to “to put into practice the central conclusion of a large body of research related to student achievement: teacher quality is the most important school-based factor in the academic success of students, particularly those from low-income families.”
After describing unique characteristics of several teachers, Ms. Gootman reports that the school’s leadership is luring these highly selected teachers with whopping big salaries.
They are members of an eight-teacher dream team, lured to an innovative charter school that will open in Washington Heights in September with salaries that would make most teachers drop their chalk and swoon; $125,000 is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, and about two and a half times as much as the national average for teacher salaries. They also will be eligible for bonuses, based on schoolwide performance, of up to $25,000 in the second year.
Will this approach provide the environment in which students who have relatively lower chances of success in comparison with their advantaged peers can actually succeed? I hope so. If it does, I suspect it will be at least partially the result of evolutionary-like forces on the teaching practices of the people charged with delivering instruction in the classrooms. They’ll focus on employing those techniques, practices, procedures, and methods that that generate higher levels of student competence. That is, they’ll teach effectively.
Link to Ms. Gootman’s article. Link to the TEP Web site.
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