Teachers in nearly every school district are paid by what is called a “single salary schedule.” This is a system that pays all teachers, regardless of subject matter expertise or teacher demand in that district, the same amount. These schedules generally provide raises based on years of experience and graduate degrees.

When I spoke with that group of doctoral students, I presented a hypothetical situation of a local business. When the business attempted to hire, they received numerous applications for one type of position and very few for another. I asked them what they might do to attract and retain people in that harder-to-staff position. The answer was clear—pay them more.

This is the very situation we have in public schools. Some positions may get few, if any, applications. These include subjects such as physics or, in some instances, special education. Nevertheless, school districts fail to use one of the key levers they have to attract and retain these teachers—pay. Instead, everyone is on the same salary schedule.

In that 2012 report, I argued that school districts could place teachers in hard-to-staff subjects at a higher level on the salary schedule. SB 727 followed that recommendation completely. The bill states: “The board of education of a school district may include differentiated placement of teachers on the salary schedule to increase compensation in order to recruit and retain teachers in hard-to-staff subject areas or hard-to-staff schools.”

When I joined the Show-Me Institute’s Director of Education Policy Susan Pendergrass on a recent podcast to discuss SB 727, I said there were things in the bill that people would like and other things they would not like. Allowing districts to differentiate pay for hard-to-staff subjects is a sensible policy that everyone should like. Of course, it would be even better if we could pay teachers based on everything they bring to the table, including their performance, but this is a step in the right direction.

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Think of it this way. When someone enters the teaching field after graduating from college, they are called “teacher.” Over the next 30 years, they can get a master’s degree, a specialist degree, or even a doctoral degree. They may attend numerous professional development sessions every year. When they retire, they may still be called “teacher.”

There are no ranks. There are no promotions. There are no steps to career advancement. The only pay raises they will receive will be based on getting additional degrees and each year of experience.

Compare this to higher education. At the higher education level, you may enter as a teaching or research professor not on a tenure track or on a tenure track. Typically, a new professor is called an “assistant” professor. After a few years, the professor can be promoted to “associate” professor and eventually to “full” professor. There are also prized “endowed professor” positions. In short, there are tiers to the profession.

This is not to say higher education is the pinnacle of excellence that should be modeled in every circumstance. Rather, this simply demonstrates the key differences between K-12 teaching and most other fields. In most public school districts, there is no room for advancement within the teaching profession. The only way to advance is to leave the classroom by becoming a principal, superintendent, or something else.

We can imagine a system where teachers are recognized for their performance in the classroom and rewarded in title and in compensation. Teachers need a system that recognizes and rewards excellence—call it merit pay, if you will. They need the opportunity to grow, to excel, and to be rewarded. That is the type of advancement opportunity teachers need. With that said, we should be wary of attempts to create a centralized advancement system from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) or the legislature. The state should empower local communities and local school leaders to develop routes for advancement for their teachers. Centrally imposed systems often become bureaucratic hoops to jump through. Local school leaders may be more motivated to create meaningful advancement opportunities. But this sort of reform surrounding advancement is what we should be focusing on—not red herrings about professional development.

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If a school has more than a 5% teacher vacancy or is filled with non-fully certified teachers, then it qualifies as a “high-need school.” “High-need subject areas” are defined as subjects in which a district had to leave a position vacant or filled the position with non-fully certified teachers in the previous year. Missouri uses a “single salary schedule,” which sets a salary floor for teachers with a bonus for master’s degree holders. Currently, a district cannot pay a science teacher more than an English teacher with similar experience and degree level—a master’s degree in physics is equivalent to a master’s degree in English.

As an example: under HB 190, a district could offer a new special education teacher (a high-need position in many districts) a salary above the current salary floor to recruit the teacher. Districts are also allowed to raise the salaries of current teachers in high-need subject areas in order to retain them. There are some limitations—HB 190 does not allow a district to demote a different teacher in order to use this enhanced flexibility to recruit or retain a teacher. Districts are limited by their own budgets, they can choose to offer these high salaries, but they must make space to do so without lowering other teachers’ salaries.

The broader debate on this topic is about an alleged teacher shortage in Missouri. But the problem is not quite that simple, or quite that broad. Missouri is having trouble recruiting teachers in specific subject areas, such as special education and mathematics. The problem is also highly concentrated; 5 school districts accounted for almost 50 percent of school vacancies in 2022. Given that Missouri is having trouble attracting teachers for certain high-need areas and schools, it makes sense to allow districts to pay certain teachers more in order to persuade candidates to fill those jobs.

Despite the logic of HB 190, several lawmakers voiced their opposition in a recent committee hearing, claiming it would “pit teacher against teacher” and that the bill would end up “doing a lot more harm to the culture of the district and the staff and schools than good.” These complaints don’t add up. There’s already significant pay differentiation in schools among teachers—veteran teachers make more money, and so do teachers with advanced degrees. Paying teachers in certain subject areas more money is just one additional variable.

This policy might also encourage Missouri teachers to gain additional skills and certifications in order to qualify for higher-paying positions. An English teacher might spend time learning about special education reading to become a teacher in a high-need subject area and receive the corresponding pay increase. This could potentially help schools fill vacancies faster, as it may be easier to promote from within instead of embarking on an external search.

We have a narrow problem in Missouri with hiring specific teachers, and that means we need a targeted solution. Pay differentiation is an idea worth strongly considering, and the objections from critics, at least so far, don’t have much merit. I’m glad to see that the legislature appears to be taking this idea seriously.

The post House Bill 190 and the Teacher Shortage appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Well, I wish twelve-year-old me could show him the Missouri Teacher Recruitment and Retention Blue Ribbon Commission’s report on what needs to be done in order to solve Missouri’s “teaching shortage,” because apparently, a money tree has bloomed and is ripe for the picking.

The report recommended increasing the minimum starting salary for teachers to $38,000, funding the Career Ladder Program (which rewards teachers for extra work that contributes to students’ academic outcomes), establishing a fund to help local school districts pay for the recommended salary increase, adding more paid wellness days (which means hiring more substitute teachers), funding a tuition assistance program for teachers, and providing salary supplements for teachers with National Board Certification.

Funding the starting salary, Career Ladder, and tuition assistance alone would cost an additional $91.5 million—and that is not including the costs for raising other teachers’ salaries who reside above the new $38,000 floor.

While those on the commission were feeling generous endorsing the handout of government funds, similar to Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas (who would give $100 to the bartender just for keeping the ice cubes cold), they did recommend an additional salary supplement for teachers in “high-need” areas.

Show-Me Institute researchers have previously discussed how pay differentiation for teachers could help fix the shortage of specific teachers in the state. Missouri utilizes a “single salary schedule,” which sets a salary floor for teachers who are new and those with 10 years of experience and a master’s degree. The remainder of the salaries in the schedule are calculated by pay increases relating directly to experience and degree acquisition.

This type of schedule rewards teachers solely based on experience and college degrees while ignoring teacher quality, relative teacher supply, and alternative market options. A potential mathematics teacher, who would be in low supply, is therefore not offered her market equivalent wage, and may choose a higher paying vocation. If schools truly want to be competitive and recruit teachers in low-supply fields, then they must respond to competitive market forces.

Almost fifty percent of teachers said they would quit their job if differentiated pay or pay for performance was implemented. Mark Walker, the commission’s chairman, critiqued this stance, stating: “The biggest surprise to us businesspeople serving on the Blue Ribbon Commission is the lack of flexibility you all [the board] has for meeting high-need positions, it’s unbelievably inappropriate in today’s highly competitive market.”

The commission has been tasked with finding solutions to the teaching crisis, and this report could possibly be an impetus to put pay differentiation into practice. I’m glad that leaders of the commission acknowledged that the hostility to pay differentiation is fundamentally unreasonable, but I wish it had been the primary focus of a much less expensive report.

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Pulling from the influencers’ responses, the Star concluded that Missouri needs to pay teachers more. That’s all fine and dandy, but simply paying teachers more is not the solution. As the editorial board points out, schools need to do a better job of paying the best teachers more. The board writes: “Deciding which teachers are “best” is complicated, of course. Test scores? Graduation rates? Classroom grades? Peer reviews? Yet the broad concept of rewarding quality teachers is sound.” I couldn’t agree more, and here’s why.

Most school districts pay teachers on a single salary schedule. This means if you are a rock-star physics teacher with dozens of other lucrative job prospects, you will be paid the same amount as a less-motivated and less-capable teacher who couldn’t find another job if he tried. This pay system is attractive to low-skilled workers, but pushes individuals with a lot of potential into other fields.

This was effectively illustrated by economist Kirabo Jackson on Twitter. I have recreated his graph (which he posted on May 31) below. The solid red line represents the single salary schedule. The blue line represents the ability of a teacher to earn more outside of teaching. As you can see, individuals with low ability (those to the left of point A) are likely to find a teaching career attractive. Meanwhile, higher-ability individuals have an incentive (better pay) to pursue another job. Now look what happens when we simply raise teacher pay (red dotted line). We shift the number of those who would like teaching from point A to point B—a marginal improvement at best.

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Now consider what would happen if we had a pay system that actually paid teachers based on their ability. This is represented by the green line. While the current system is designed to attract the lowest-skilled individuals into the profession, changing the pay structure to reward high performing individuals could make teaching desirable for the best and the brightest.

The Kansas City Star’s editorial board is right: We should pay great teachers more. And we should do it by changing how we pay teachers.

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Teacher compensation is an important policy discussion. Yet, too often the mere suggestion of change is met with hostility by teachers. As a former teacher myself, I understand that there is safety in salary schedules along with uncertainty about what they might be replaced with. Indeed, one retired teacher took to the newspaper’s pages to make this point. Although she didn’t argue specifically for salary schedules, it was clear that she was averse to change. But many people are examining how we pay teachers, and they often reach the same conclusion I reached—we need to change how we do business. But what should that change look like?

On July 27, a National Public Radio station in Michigan ran a story called, “Are we thinking about teacher pay all wrong?” The piece described Washington, D.C.’s merit-based pay system. As the piece notes, “There are two parts to the D.C. pay system: an annual bonus of up to $25,000 after one year of being rated ‘highly effective,’ and an increase in base salary of up to $27,000 for teachers who are rated ‘highly effective’ two or more years in a row.” Rigorous evaluation has shown that D.C.’s system, which is a combination of pay reform and a new teacher evaluation process, has improved the teacher workforce and led to an increase in student achievement.

There is of course still debate as to whether the D.C. model could be effectively implemented in other cities, let alone in rural parts of Missouri. Nevertheless, Missouri students and teachers would benefit from a critical examination of our teacher pay policies.

Unfortunately, too many teachers (like the one who wrote a response to me) and their union representatives seem unwilling to have a serious discussion on this important matter. One teacher in the NPR story suggested that we “need to offer starting teachers an apprentice pay for 5 years at $55,000. If they are effective after 5 years, bump them up to $75,000. If they are highly effective pay them $100,000.” Such a structure simply is not economically feasible. The response from David Hecker, of the American Federation of Teachers of Michigan, was equally unsatisfying. He first suggested that “starting pay should be comparable to other professions,” but went on to ask, “Should the senior teacher get more for experience, or the younger teacher who needs to make a decent living so they can be attracted to and stay in the field? That should never be the trade off.” His answer displays a fundamental lack of economic understanding. Of course there is a trade-off! There is always a trade-off.

We should not continue to pay teachers solely based on years of experience and extra degrees, especially when those things are not closely related to student outcomes. But in any case, if we are going to have a fruitful conversation, teachers need to come to the table with thoughtful suggestions. Maybe then we could create a system that truly fosters excellence and rewards teachers for the hard work they do.

The post Reconsidering Teacher Pay appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Teachers are paid on what is known as a salary schedule, which maps out exactly how much a teacher will make for their entire career based on how many years of experience they have, with additional adjustments made for teachers with advanced degrees. When finances are tight, however, district officials will often do one of two things: sometimes they decline to adjust the schedule for inflation, and in leaner years they may “freeze” teachers at their current salaries. According to the Springfield News-Leader, salaries for Marshfield teachers were frozen for four years, and teachers received just a one percent raise in two other years.

Some teachers feel a sense of entitlement regarding pay raises. As a former public school teacher, I know this from experience. You would feel entitled to a raise too if your employer presented you with a predetermined salary structure. You consider yourself bound by the salary schedule, but you consider the district bound by it as well. What good is an agreement that only one side must abide by?

Over the years, I have analyzed hundreds of salary schedules. While conducting my research, I found one school district that did not have a salary schedule. When I spoke with an administrator there, I asked him why not. He said the schedule was like a promise to teachers. They expected to receive those raises. When they did not, they felt that something had been taken away from them. It felt like a slap in the face.

When workers in any field believe they are not valued, morale drops, productivity may decrease, and employees might look for jobs elsewhere. We certainly don’t want low morale among our teachers.

In Marshfield, with the foundation formula fully funded for the first time since its inception, the district will largely make up the “missed” pay increases. This will help ameliorate any negative sentiments from the years when their salaries were frozen. It will, however, do little to change expectations among teachers.

Currently, salary schedules dominate school district budgets. They tell the financial office how much money is available to hire new teachers or to purchase new resources. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that approximately 80 percent of a district’s operating expenses go toward salaries and benefits. With salary schedules, school boards and administrators cannot control these expenses without “taking away” raises from teachers. That is a problem.

The school district without a salary schedule has a different model, one in line with sound financial management. It gives raises based on how much money is left in the budget, which helps school officials effectively manage their budget.

The post Want to Value Teachers? Eliminate Salary Schedules appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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Doctors, lawyers, you name the profession—professionals are paid based on what they do. They are paid in proportion to the demand for their labor, their skill, and their hustle. Not so for teachers. Teachers are paid via a single-salary schedule that doesn’t factor in their quality or effort.

Let me be clear, I’m not saying teachers are not professionals. I’m saying they are not paid like professionals.

Elisa Crouch of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has been following the ongoing dispute in St. Louis Public Schools regarding teacher pay. For seven years, teachers in St. Louis have been stuck at the same level on their salary schedule and have not received a raise. Recently, the unionized workforce rejected a proposed 3.5% salary increase, calling it a slap in the face.

I’m not sure how this dispute will pan out, but now is the time for school district administrators to consider alternatives to the single-salary schedule.

For starters, they should consider alternatives that allow great teachers to be rewarded. A single-salary schedule is quality blind. Now, I’m not talking about simply tying pay to test scores or some mechanistic rating system, but real management and feedback; pairing data with professional judgement.

They should they take into account not only quality, but also the broader labor market. My 2012 study, “The Salary Straitjacket,” demonstrates how math and science teachers make less than P.E. teachers, despite a shortage of math and science teachers. This isn’t a knock on P.E. teachers, but teachers with Math and Science training who don’t feel adequately compensated are likely to have more lucrative options outside of teaching than P.E. teachers. Districts have to take this into account when determining wages, or there will always be shortages.

One of the downsides to a single-salary schedule is that it dictates wages to the district. The salary schedule doesn’t factor in the financial health of the school district. It mandates that teachers earn X more next year, regardless. A much smarter approach would be for the district to determine how much they have available for salaries and then figure out how they want to distribute that money among teachers. Such an approach would facilitate better management of scarce financial resources.

Teachers certainly deserve to be treated like professionals, which is why administrators should start thinking about wholesale changes to the way they pay teachers. Professionals deserve professional pay. 

The post Attention Teachers: Professionals Do Not Have a Salary Schedule appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

The discussion about teacher tenure reform often focuses on the negative aspects, such as getting rid of bad teachers. What most Missourians don’t realize is that our current tenure law also has important implications for rewarding exceptional teachers.

In 2001, the Sherwood-Cass R-VIII School District attempted to give small bonuses to seven teachers. The district wanted to entice these good teachers to sign two-year contracts instead of typical one-year contracts. The Sherwood National Education Association (NEA) challenged the district’s actions.

The courts ruled in favor of the Sherwood NEA, determining that the state’s Teacher Tenure Act does not allow this “commitment pay.” The Missouri Court of Appeals in Sherwood National Education Association v. Sherwood-Cass R-VIII School District said:

The principle[] … is that teachers cannot be compensated for their teaching duties in an amount other than what is set forth in the salary schedule without running afoul of the Teacher Tenure Act. Sherwood, 168 S.W.3d 456, 460 (Mo. Ct. App. W.D. 2005) [emphasis added].

The law has been interpreted to say teachers in Missouri cannot receive performance or merit pay of any sort. The decision in Sherwood establishes precedent for other courts and is a strong deterrent to other school districts considering forms of merit pay.

Teacher tenure laws may make it harder to fire teachers, but in Missouri, they have been interpreted to also prevent districts from incentivizing the good ones to stay. As it stands, school districts are discouraged from using basic forms of merit pay to try to prevent attrition of good teachers. Nor can they use merit pay to reward exceptional teachers for a job well done.

All the more reason to say “it is time for teacher tenure reform.”

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The proposed bill essentially accomplishes five things:

1. Establishes school letter grades.
2. Requires teacher evaluations to be conducted annually based in part on increasing student achievement.
3. Removes the state requirement of Last In, First Out when a district is undergoing a reduction in force.
4. Requires school districts to depart from the single salary schedule and develop a performance pay system based on the evaluations.
5. Removes permanent teacher status for newly hired teachers.

What makes this bill stand apart from other bills that deal with letter grades and teacher policies is the flexibility it provides to schools to determine their own policies. The bill would not mandate exactly how a district must evaluate teachers, nor would it mandate how they must award pay increases. It simply provides guidance and a framework with which school districts are free to determine their own policies. Moreover, it does not change tenure or pay policies for current teachers, unless the teacher chooses to opt into the performance pay program.

I submitted written testimony to the Senate Education Committee and concluded:

Senate Bill 408 would remove some restrictive regulations that inhibit schools from making important staffing decisions and would replace them with good governance that provides school districts a lot of leeway to develop their own policies. For all of these reasons, I am in support of this bill.

And that is why I am awarding this bill the James Shuls Favorite Bill Award.

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On Dec. 4, the California Teacher’s Union released a video titled “Tax the Rich: An Animated Fairy Tale.”

The cartoon, which smacks of indoctrination of children, attacks rich people as the villains of most of our society’s ills. The greedy rich decided they did not want to pay taxes. So they bought politicians, paid for private schools, and private security. They basically stole all of their money from the 99 percent.

It is natural to want some liability coverage, but there must be a way to get it without supporting an organization that seeks to indoctrinate children with anti-rich propaganda, opposes school choice, balks at performance pay, and protects low-performing teachers.

One option may be the Association of American Educators (AAE).

As one AAE member says, “The AAE does not go out and lobby the government for random political issues. What they do is they handle only education issues.”

The AAE also is generally supportive of many sensible education reform initiatives. Such as:

School Choice

“Parents must have the choice of where to educate their individual child. And as educators we must recognize the possibilities for advancement and positive growth in the profession through school choice.”

Performance Pay

“Teachers in a modern workforce do not necessarily need one-size-fits-all salary and benefits packages that do little to recognize teachers who go above and beyond in their schools. “

Tenure Reform

“Further, AAE is against the ‘last hired, first fired’ policy by which newer teachers, regardless of performance are let go first to meet lay-off requirements.”

As a former public school teacher, I know there are many liberty-loving individuals in the classroom and there are probably more organizations that support those values and teachers.

If you are a teacher who supports free-market ideals, I would love to hear from you. Or if you know of other organizations that Missouri teachers should know about, please let me know.

You can reach me at james.shuls@showmeinstitute.org or on Twitter @Shulsie

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About the paper: Imagine a school in which the highest prize for academic achievement went to the student who had been there the longest. Though it seems ridiculous to reward students in this manner, this is exactly how school districts reward teachers — by longevity. Teachers by and large are paid on a single salary schedule. These schedules not only fail to reward teachers based on their quality, but they fail to recognize that teaching different subjects and grade levels requires different skill sets and that those particular skill sets are in varying demand in the marketplace. For instance, there are reportedly 3.1 jobs in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for every one unemployed person in Missouri. In comparison, there is only 1 non-STEM job for every 3.7 unemployed people. This means teachers with strong backgrounds in math and science may have more, higher-paying options outside of teaching. This is a reality we must address.

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Both of these posts stem from my paper, “The Salary Straitjacket.” So who is right, Mead or McShane? Well, both are correct.

McShane writes, “Once we realize that different teachers have different labor market values, we can have a conversation about linking teacher pay to teacher performance.”

Mead concludes, “There are almost certainly circumstances where it makes sense to pay a really great gym, or art, or music teacher more than some math teachers get paid. The real problem is that our current system doesn’t take issues of value-added or demand/supply into account at all.”

Though they may disagree with who has better options in the marketplace, both scholars agree that schools should not pay all teachers the same. Instead they should reward teachers based on their marketability, which includes their performance.

I did not write “The Salary Straitjacket” simply to say that math and science teachers make less when they should make more. I wrote the paper because we need to rethink how we compensate teachers; the low pay of math and science was a clear illustration of why. In the end, it is not about one type of teacher being better or more valuable than another; it is about rewarding teachers for their unique contribution to their school.

I conclude the paper with this: “The bottom line is that Missouri school districts must depart from the single salary schedule if they want to attract and retain high-quality math and science teachers . . .” Replace math and science in that sentence with any other subject and I think the statement will still hold true. We must stop treating all teachers as if they are the same.

The post In Defense of Gym Teachers, and Art, and Band, and Music, and . . . appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

My friend’s concerns are many, but he has two main questions. Is it fair to pay teachers of one subject more than teachers of another? And, if we paid math and science (a.k.a. STEM) teachers more, wouldn’t it lead to shortages in other fields?

In the paper, I tried to focus on what is practical and logical from what we know about teaching and the job market. Because STEM teachers are in high demand and short supply, it does not make logical sense to pay them the same amount as teachers of other subjects who are in abundant supply. Fairness, of course, is a subjective term and paying teachers of some subjects more may seem unfair to some; but as I say in the paper, “it seems more unfair . . . to not recognize teachers for their specific skills and talents. Not all teachers are the same and not all skills are equally demanded.”

It is also important to remember that schools are not in the business of adult fairness, they are in the business of educating children. To that end, single salary schedules put a straitjacket on school officials and prevent them from having the ability to attract and retain teachers.

School districts need to be released from their straitjackets so they can begin paying teachers for their unique contributions. Schools districts then would have more leverage to attract high-quality teachers in STEM fields. If this creates shortages in other fields, the market would need to adjust. That is the beauty of the free market; it has an uncanny way of adjusting to supply and demand, whereas our current system is inflexible and perpetuates the problem of shortages in STEM subjects.

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One of the challenges of our schools is attracting and retaining great teachers. Top-performing teachers generate learning gains almost double that of a teacher in the bottom 20 percent, equivalent to almost six months of learning (see study). Unfortunately, institutional rules and burdensome legislation make it difficult for schools to hire and retain great teachers or to remove low-performing ones. In fact, a recent study revealed schools retain teachers from the top and bottom at “strikingly similar rates.”

Part of the problem is schools treat teachers like they are interchangeable. In reality, teachers vary wildly in terms of performance and have markedly different opportunities based on their expertise.

Bold Solution 1:

Empower schools to attract and retain the best teachers and promote a system that equips schools to remediate or remove the worst.

Schools need to be able to hire the best person for the job, regardless of certification, and they should be equipped to pay each teacher what they are worth based on their performance and market options. To do this, schools need control over their compensation system, including the retirement package they offer to their employees. Additionally, schools must be able to identify and remediate or remove poorly performing teachers.  One way of doing this would be to actually evaluate teachers based on their performance and make tenure decisions based on their ability to impact student achievement (see here for an example).

Some teachers are great and some are not so great, some have a lot of other employment options and some do not. We need to be smart in how we staff schools and stop relying on an antiquated system that treats teachers as if they are all the same.

The post Stuck In The Middle: Empowering Schools appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There also was good news for some teachers in Dieckhaus’ 2011 legislation. The proposal called for the best teachers to be paid at least twice as much as the poorest-performing teachers. While this may seem like common sense (why not pay the best teachers more, as a reward for their effort?), it runs contrary to the current system of paying Missouri public school teachers.

The 2011 legislation did not pass. However, Dieckhaus is considering submitting tenure reform legislation again this year. The bill is not yet available, but I have listed two areas of reform that are needed to help improve student academic achievement in Missouri. Our priority should be educating  children, not rewarding those who happen to have been teaching for the longest period of time.

Let’s pay good teachers more: In Missouri, teachers are paid under what is known as a “teacher salary schedule.” Broadly, teachers who have more years of experience and higher levels of education are paid more (here is an example). At many school districts, these are the only components of teacher pay — teachers who teach difficult subjects, at-risk students, and teachers who have the best track record of helping students learn do not get a pay boost.

Teachers who do a poor job of teaching students can actually earn more than the good teachers if the poor teachers have a higher education level and/or more years of teaching experience.

Dieckhaus told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 2011 that “It’s time we move away from paying people based on how long they’ve been teaching and what piece of paper they have hanging on the wall.” I certainly agree.

Paired with the issue of teacher compensation is the question of how to deal with teachers who have a track record of failing to teach students. Right now, those teachers can stay at a district for years, if not indefinitely.

Let’s help school districts get rid of bad teachers: State law awards teachers “indefinite contracts” if they have taught at the same school district for at least five years. These “permanent teachers” can be terminated, but only through a lengthy process. If a school district terminates a teacher (after going through all of the notification requirements specified by state law), that teacher can appeal the termination, triggering a court case. If the teacher wins in court, the school district must pay that teacher all of the compensation he or she would have received had he or she stayed at the district during the period of appeal.

I suppose that if you are trying to discourage teacher termination, the above makes sense. But, as a state, our concern should not be to hire and keep on as many teachers as possible. We should instead be concerned with how to provide quality education to students. Allowing failing teachers to continue to teach students does nothing to help students, and may be hurting them.

It is an uncomfortable truth, but one we must acknowledge. As U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan put it, “We can no longer pretend that all teachers or all principals are from Lake Woebegone where everyone is above average.” Many academic studies have shown that teacher quality matters. Eric Hanushek, an education economist at Stanford University, has shown that good teachers can teach students three times as much as bad teachers — in a single year. Improving student academic achievement can be achieved in part by attracting more good teachers to the profession, and encouraging the bad teachers to leave the field.

I hope that the 2012 teacher tenure reform legislation can help enable school districts to have more autonomy when it comes to rewarding good teachers and terminating the worst teachers. When the full text of the bill becomes available, I will post my take on it here.

The post It Is Time To Reform Teacher Tenure In Missouri appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Offering middle-school math teachers bonuses up to $15,000 did not produce gains in student test scores, Vanderbilt University researchers reported Tuesday in what they said was the first scientifically rigorous test of merit pay.

Some 296 middle-school math teachers — two-thirds of the district’s middle-school math teachers — volunteered to participate in the experiment. Half were placed randomly in a control group, while the rest were eligible for bonuses of $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 if their pupils scored significantly higher than expected on the statewide exam known as the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

Except for some temporary gains for fifth-graders, though, their students progressed no faster than those in classes taught by the 146 other teachers.

The PDF for the study is available online.

As a merit pay advocate, I’d love to disparage these results as the product of some unsound methodology, but I can’t, in good faith, do that. This seems like a relatively clean experiment. Yet merit pay supporters need not abandon their cause. The study provides good answers, but the questions may be too narrow to be fully relevant. For example, in evaluating the responsiveness of teachers to potential performance bonuses, the study approximates what a labor economist would call elasticity of effort but not elasticity of labor supply. Put differently, the study suggests that the performance of existing teachers may not change in the presence of performance incentives but the study does not consider the dynamic changes in the overall teaching pool that may result from implementation of merit pay programs. More research must be conducted to evaluate whether merit pay attracts a better pool of educators who, in turn, have positive impacts on student performance.

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During the question and answer session afterward, a questioner who identified herself as a longtime teacher took issue with the merit pay suggestion. She argued that teachers do their jobs because they love their work and are passionate about it, and are not motivated by “greed” like people on Wall Street. There is some truth to this. Certainly, no one goes into teaching expecting to become fabulously wealthy. Still, I was reminded of what my cooperating teacher used to say when I was going through student teaching: “I’m doing it for the money … if they stopped paying me, I’d stop showing up.” Unless someone is independently wealthy, the money matters, and if school districts could pay more to the best teachers, they would likely attract and retain more highly skilled individuals to the profession.

In Superfreakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner argued that one of the major factors for America’s falling educational achievement over the last half century is the movement of educated women into fields outside of teaching, such as law and medicine. That is not a reason to lament women entering the wider workforce, but if there were more upward mobility possible in teaching, far more qualified people — both men and women — would have opted for teaching. Teaching can be an inherently satisfying profession, but it would be foolish to pin the hopes of our educational system on pure altruism.

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