Is the traditional teacher step pay system about to end? Is the new trend moving to a knowledge and skill based pay? I started my career with the beginning of unions negotiating and striking for step-based pay. Is this method and should this method come to an end?
State and federal accountability systems have put demands on schools to improve educational methods and student achievement. Educators claim that improving methods, teacher quality, and student achievement will require an increase of the instructional capacity of educators.
For many years, educators climbed the stepladder to automatic salary increases. This has become an imperfect system with negotiating teams focused on adjusting the system. Now, the focus is on discussions of alternative pay structures and compensating teachers for how well they do their job.
To increase the instructional load of educators there needs to be an increase of incentives to improve performance, skills, and knowledge along with hours of professional development. Professional development will cost the district time and money during school hours to include a substitute to cover classes or a stipend for teachers to stay after regulated hours along with paying for a professional development team of facilitators.
Change doesn’t come easy in the field of education. If pay is connected to students’ test scores, it is difficult to determine how to place a value on various factors of the learning:
• What the teacher contributes to the learning.
• The various roles of each teacher in the system.
• The method of supervision/observation of the teacher and the assessment tool used by supervisors.
• The location of the school – social and economic fabric.
• Teacher rank and years of experience.
This list only names a few, not to mention where to begin the base pay.
If done improperly, pay for performance can create a competition within and erode the team effort that is needed to educate the whole child. With teachers working as a team, they model the process that is needed for the student to work in the real world. On the other hand, collaboration may be built into the merit pay system.
Many argue that compensation based on performance will stimulate a market for high quality teachers. I argue that rewarding teachers based on performance alone will not raise student test scores. What is the point of merit pay – to attract quality educators, to raise student achievement scores, or both? In Florida, Jeb Bush states “…the idea is to reward teachers who get the best results or most improvement from their students…” www.stateimpact.npr.org. (Remember the other Bush was responsible for No Child Left Behind.)
Until studies and research demonstrate an effect of student achievement, the system must stay as it is. Educators and unions are likely to cooperate with a merit pay system if the idea is viable and not forced. Let’s not make the education profession undesirable. It is unquestionable that the factor in determining the success or failure of a child is the classroom teacher. We need to find a way to honor and promote great teachers that make a difference and I’m not sure that merit pay is the answer at the present time. What I do know from my research on the subject – the idea should not be abandoned and is worth considering because the present system takes little account of ability or effort. A final consideration in a new system is whether the money will be there to make it work. Even if student scores don’t improve, the result of a merit pay system may just be that it is a more fair system.
