Like most teacher pay scales, NC teachers are rewarded for time of service, credentials and advance degrees. Problem is, none of these variables is really tied to classroom effectiveness. The lack of linkage between good teaching and compensation, not only shapes the lifetime earnings arc of teachers but also impacts students whose achievement levels are strongly tied to the quality of teaching. Developing a new NC teacher pay plan that remedies these shortcomings is the task Jacob Vigdor, associate professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke University tackles in a highly interesting and relevant article (Scrap the Sacrosanct Salary Schedule) in the fall issue of Education Next. Vigdor outlines the current problems when he writes:
On the North Carolina salary schedule, teachers receive rewards for experience, for attaining advanced degrees, and for becoming certified by the NBPTS. A masters’ degree entitles a teacher to a permanent 10 percent increase in salary. Teachers with doctoral degrees earn a permanent 15 percent differential relative to those with bachelors degrees. Teachers with NBPTS certification receive a permanent 12 percent boost in salary. Finally teachers accrue increments to their salary as they gain experience. At the top rung of the experience ladder, teachers with 27 or more years in the classroom earn 68 percent more than starting teachers with equivalent credentials.
Vigdor then zeroes in on the real issue:
But the available evidence suggests that the connection between credentials and teaching effectiveness is very weak at best, and the connection between additional years of experience and teaching effectiveness, which substantial in the first few years in the classroom, attenuates over time. Though exact results vary from one study to the next, there is little doubt that credentials and additional years of experience (beyond the first few years) matter far less to teacher effectiveness than they do to teacher compensation as it is currently designed.
The solution? Implement an evidence-based salary schedule that rewards educators in the early years of their careers when a teacher’s impact on student gains are most significant. Vigdor’s proposes a reasonable, revenue-neutral plan for correcting shortcomings in the current system. His plan infuses the current salary structure with market forces and ties teacher pay to effectiveness. These are much needed reforms, likely to draw support from conservatives and moderates and stiff opposition from teachers unions. Still, NC needs to attract and retain more teachers. UNC General Administration has estimated the state will need 5,000 new teachers a year for the next three years to meet staffing needs. All the more reason to give Vigdor’s proposal serious consideration.
Placing almost exclusive emphasis upon test-score improvement as a basis for rewarding teachers is patently unfair and, when coupled with inadequate performance-appraisal systems, drives teachers toward unethical behavior or departure to other pursuits.
A primary reason the public has not been more supportive of higher funding for education has been the poor relationship between better funding and higher educational quality as revealed by a number of studies.
Use of an appraisal system based upon the following guidelines should go a long way toward turning things around.
Those associated with schools, need to fairly identify true “stars” and “inadequate performers” as one of the bases for:
justifying good pay for outstanding teachers,
providing for self-guidance on the part of newcomers and present staff,
and providing an important basis for terminating those who cannot, or will not, measure up.
Research findings show that evaluators achieve much better agreement about who are Stars and Inadequate Performers than they do about who are Average, Above-Average, and Below-Average performers. Yet, placing individuals in the middle-three categories is a time-consuming, often arbitrary, and resentment-causing activity that most evaluators dislike having to do. Also, clearly, an average performer in a superior organization deserves much more recognition than an average performer in an inferior one. No wonder that many teachers and their unions oppose conventional merit-rating systems!
To avoid a popularity contest, assure greater fairness, and provide for constructive self-guidance, there should be behavioral documentation for both Star and Inadequate Performer nominations via the Critical Incident Technique.
To lay the groundwork for this, students, parents, veteran administrators, and experienced teachers should be polled at to what specific, observable behaviors they associate with outstanding and inadequate performance for each important aspect of a teacher’s job.
Then, required behavioral documentation for Star and Inadequate-Performer nominations from fellow teachers, adminstrators, students, and parents should be based upon the most agreed-upon behaviors, and the agreed-to relative weights that should be assigned to these.
The results of this analysis can also constructively guide the initial training and subsequent selection of teachers, as well as, provide a much-needed, qualifying context for the currently over-stressed evaluation factor of test-score-improvement.
This approach also sets the stage for more productive review sessions between the rater and ratee. Since the ratee has a sound basis for self-rating, the session should start with the rater asking “How do you rate yourself for this past period through the presentation of relevant, supporting behaviors?” No rater can be all-knowing, so if behaviors are mentioned that she or he is not aware of, the rater can postpone giving his or her evaluation to provide time to check out the validity of the assertions, if this seems necessary.
A sound behavioral basis for rating also facilitates the use of motivational goal setting during the review session. For example, if the ratee wants to be a Star, what specific behavioral goals does she or he plan to adopt by such and such a time? If stardom is not the goal, which specific, Inadequate Performer behaviors will he or she need to avoid?
This approach permits a rater to be more of a counselor and coach, than one who appears to sit in arbitrary judgment.
For discussion of relevant research and related citations, see: “Improving Performance Appraisal Systems” by William M. Fox, NATIONAL PRODUCTIVITY REVIEW, Winter 1987-88, pages 20-27.
William Fox
gryfox@bellsouth.net
Professor Emeritus
Department of Management
University of Florida
(352) 376-9786
Try raising teacher’s wages in general. If we’re teaching at schools like Hillside in Durham, NC or Eastside in Gainesville, FL but we can’t even secure a loan to buy a 900 square foot house, what’s the incentive to do well? And why stay at schools like the ones I mention above, where low SES is almost insurmountable when it comes to formal assessments. One could just work at Jordan in Durham, or Oakhall in Gainesville, and suddenly our pay goes up because student performance increased. What was the big factor? High SES correlates to these results and not so much anything I did. I’ve worked 60 hours a week for ten years in both cities where you esteemed gentle men are from. You have some logical ideas, but of course, you don’t buy your bread with a teacher’s salary. I graduated with a Masters and two bachelors. My GPA was a 3.9 average for all three institutions. I was a successful journalist before becoming a teacher. Since, I’ve won awards from districts and praise from parents and students, but secretly, I dread returning to the classroom in NC. They cut my pay, my healthcare, etc. Why would I want to continue to work 60 hours a week for crappy pay, only to be gauged, observed, and evaluated by “professionals” who have never taught or who have never actually been successful with students. Your PHDs further distance you from the reality of teaching in America. You want proof? How many of you would suggest the career to your Duke or UF students or to your kids? Yeah, the problem with teaching is you can’t retain people like me. We leave, get PHDs, and become you, pontificating pointlessly without potency. Good luck.
I agree wholeheartedly. No one should be setting or suggesting teacher policy unless they have spent some years in the classroom. Empiricism matters. Quality educators in the public school system need to be in partnership with the universities.Teachers need to be professors in public school with the same level of course load and collaboration and support. Sports such as football and basketball need to be clubs outside of school and not dictate student focus in grades as early as lower elementary. Once we insist on having public schools a place of learning and provide public school teachers with the same autonomy, opportunity for growth as we provide to professors, we may actually improve our schools. Lastly, we need more males in the classroom. The 90plus percent of women in the role does not reflect the student body and also keeps the profession in a outdated factory model with summers off so kids could work on the farm.
It’s time to enter the modern age of high tech, high education, creativity, and flexibility.
Being in mostly an all women profession makes it a target for cutting funds. If there were more males it would not only reflect the student body but would also make the profession of teaching less of a target. Women are still second class citizens no matter how much education we acquire. The educational system has become a business and the students customers. Numbers win out over needs of students, and believe me the numbers have been manipulated. I have seen it on a small scale and felt my job in jeapordy because I figured it out by mistake. You are attracting manipulators into education not educators. All for the excuse of not paying out money to what the people in charge think is not important to their own glorification. Get in the classroom, try to reach a crack baby with your philosophy and buy transportion, shelter and groceries on that salary. Or better yet sit on a throne and keep certain groups uneducated so as not to upset the balance of have and havenots. I definatley agree that merit based pay will put money in the wrong pockets. Too many low income or uninterested parents and behavior problems. What about those teachers? Just pay the teachers a salary where they can do more than just survive, and get your pharisee rears over to ground zero.
everyone wants to always complain or manipulate teachers pay. in nc it is not so great. If someone kept trying to mess with your pay how do you feel. It is the worse thing you can do with an employee. So, merit pay…..what about for administrators? or their buddies that are teaching…….quit trying to fix a broken system with a manipulation of pay…..it doesn’t help. Those who are passionate about what they do will always be that way…..80 20 rule…..so 80% are not that great……pretty soon you will not be able to fill the jobs and be spending more money on the revolving door. you can’t legislate education…..stop the non sense…..it begins at home and parents getting involved with the child/student…….wake up……we are already behind the rest……turn off the tv and the computer and open a book and take on some of the responsibility of learning……….these soon to be adults want to socialize and get by with a minimum amount of work…so we hold the teacher responsible…give me a break…..and lets not get started on standardized tests………..what reality are we in here….and by the way…..I am a teacher and it has been the best job I ever had, the pay stinks, the administration and B.S politicians…….my students come back after high and thank me for helping them prepare……I do not need a standardized test or a professor looking to make himself look good for his job or any thing else……just step back and contemplate what is real about what is and has been happening instead f knee jerk reacting…..as the case with what people tend to do……no wonder the rest of the world looks at us like idiots that we are (me included)……
Ok I am a first year teacher that student taught in Chapel Hill and then got a job in rural nc. What I have seen as the most important reason for student success is parent involvmet. In Chapel Hill if the student was failing and I called there would be a change in the student after that. Where I am now it seems parents are too busy or flat out do not care. Most of my students seem not to care about the freshman science classes I teach. With this being the case how can you come up with a fair pay scale? If I where in chapel hill teaching the same class I do now I know my results would be better. I am not sure how to best rate teachers but I don’t think it can be 100% about testing. You also need to take a look at what you are starting with. To use sports as an example, if you get the top recruiting class every year vs just an ave one but you take them to sweet 16 how can it be said you did not do great with the talent you had. Same with teaching, if I have below ave students to start with but do more with them than a school system like chapel hill, is’int good enough?