Teacher Compensation
By Edward J. McElroy

You know as well as I do that no one goes into teaching to get rich. But no one could fault you for wanting to earn a professional salary
for the challenging and important work you do. Teaching has many
rewards, but the fact remains that from a compensation perspective, it's a lousy job.

A different approach
A recent survey by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) found that even when teachers are satisfied with other aspects of their job, only one teacher in 10 is very satisfied with his or her salary.

We must move to a different approach to teacher compensation. Such a movement is already underway; unfortunately, many of these proposals are intended to pay only a few people higher salaries, rather than pay all teachers a professional wage. Teachers should not have to toil for a decade or longer to be paid the same amount a recent college graduate can make in another field.

Alternative pay plans
What some people refer to as merit pay has been proposed as an
alternative to the traditional salary schedule. Merit pay would be
used as a way to reward outstanding teachers, spark improved performance and provide incentives for good teachers to enter and stay in the profession. Unfortunately, most merit pay plans both in and out of education have been conceived, structured or carried out
in such a way that they failed to achieve what they set out to do.

There are more promising ways to change the way teachers are paid.
Professional pay is central to promoting teacher quality. A good
number of AFT affiliates have negotiated changes to traditional pay plans for teachers, including increased pay for additional roles, for National Board Certification, for teaching in hard-to-staff schools, school-wide improvements and for the knowledge and skills that
teachers demonstrate in the classroom.

Such alternate pay plans can work, but a few prerequisites must be in place. First, professional compensation systems must be bargained with the teachers' representative. In addition, there must be an adequate salary base for all teachers. Alternative salary systems must have sufficient funding, credible, agreedupon standards and measures of professional practice. They should include a well developed and adequately funded professional development system and incentives that are available to all eligible teachers, without quotas or reductions in individual monetary amounts as more teachers qualify.

Decent rewards
There is much to commend with the traditional salary system – it eliminates unfair bias and has a sensible foundation. But it has not resulted in compensation for teachers that reflects the professional nature of their work. Nor do most teachers' salaries reflect the requirements needed to enter the profession nor the growing demands on teachers to help all students reach ever-increasing levels of achievement.

That's not to say that you can't find fault in alternative pay plans. Many experiments with this type of compensation have failed because they opened the door to favoritism and discrimination and they instituted quotas instead of rewarding all who were worthy of additional compensation. These plans have also bred harmful competition between teachers rather than cooperation toward the common goal of helping all students succeed. Unfortunately, many of the compensation plans proposed today still share many of these characteristics.

Teachers deserve respectable wages and benefits, and so do other workers, as well. When people begrudge teachers and others who have earned decent rewards for their work, it can lead to a dangerous race to the bottom.

Edward J. McElroy is the President of the American Federation of Teachers.

August/September, 2005. Volume 36, No. 1