Top Teachers Issue Call for Revamped Pay Plans

Tired of reports by business executives and Cabinet officers on how to fix U.S. schools, 18 award-winning teachers produced their own recommendations this month, starting with a major overhaul of how teachers are paid.

The report, sponsored by the Hillsborough, N.C.-based Center for Teaching Quality, said teachers should be able to advance through three tiers -- novice, professional and expert -- and schools should stop paying teachers more just because they have more years on the job.

"If you don't have a career ladder that encourages teachers to advance in their profession -- and be paid accordingly as they advance -- tinkering around the edges by providing $2,000 bonuses for a handful of teachers will not secure the stable, high-quality professional workforce we need," the teachers said.

In particular, the group said, pay plans should "reward leadership, not seniority." It said that "qualified teachers who take on additional responsibilities -- mentoring novices and peers and preparing new teachers, creating family- and community-outreach programs, serving on advisory councils and the like -- should be paid for their time outside the classroom." And the jobs should go not to the oldest teachers but to the ones with the best classroom results, the group said.

Taking North Carolina as an example, the group suggested an annual pay scale that started at $30,000 for a novice and climbed to $70,000 for an expert. But an expert with extra school improvement responsibilities could make as much as $130,000.

Such proposals could meet resistance from teachers unions and other groups that have an interest in continuing the current pay system enshrined in contracts and school system policies across the country.

The report was produced by 15 female and three male teachers, all with classroom experience but many now serving in training roles. Eight have taught primarily in elementary school, five in middle school and five in high school.

The report endorsed the views of many expert panels that teachers should be paid more if they have better results in their classroom, but it pointed out flaws in efforts to do that. The team was critical of a Florida program that limited performance incentives to one out of every four teachers. They also said rewarding only those who teach state-tested subjects, such as reading and math, was a bad idea.

They recommended more money for teachers whose students improved significantly, as long as the results were based on more than just one variety of test. They said systems should be free to target specialties they need. "It makes no sense for an individual community to pay more for a math teacher if it actually needs more art or history teachers," the report said.