and demand–greater opportunities for math or science majors bid up their earnings in other careers, so getting them into teaching requires competitive salaries. It would not mean that physics teachers are more important than elementary teachers.
In the current system, an increase for one teacher requires increases for all. If, for instance, we decided that our teachers are underpaid, as state officials from all parts of the country tell me, current practice would make a meaningful pay increase prohibitive. Just to bring the salaries in the below-average states to the national average would cost $8.5 billion–an amount that is fiscally irrational. It may seem like a meaningless argument, except that such an amount is dictated by the current uniform salary schedule, which requires those below-average states to raise each teacher’s salary. It would be much cheaper–not to mention more educationally effective–to raise the salaries of just the most-effective teachers, those deserving of the increase, rather than all teachers. Then there would be money available to give larger raises to the very best teachers.
It would be similarly impossible to bring all teachers’ salaries up to the average level of other professions. Why would we want to pay more to the least-effective teachers anyway? What we end up with, then, are paltry average annual increases (as teachers gain experience and course credits), ranging from the high of a $1,498 average increase in California to a meager $503 at the low end in South Dakota.
In the Madison School District in Arizona, the lowest salary for a new teacher with only a bachelor’s degree is $31,304 and the highest salary after many years and 72 postbaccalaureate credits is $57,251, an 82 percent increase over a career! Compare that with the legal profession, where the lowest-paid 10 percent earn less than $44,490 and the highest 10 percent earned more than $145,600–a 227 percent difference! The flat salary schedule for teachers is a good reason for those in Madison to welcome the stipends of $6,250 that the district offers to its “master” teachers, who take a leadership role among the faculty, and the bonuses averaging $3,400 to teachers who exhibit outstanding classroom performance and student achievement.
The traditional K-12 compensation system is obsolete in that it is no longer useful, but, sadly, it is not obsolete, because it is still in use.
The Teacher Advancement Program
For the past four years, the Milken Family Foundation, founded in 1982 and based in Santa Monica, California, has been working through its Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) in Madison and in more than 60 other schools–mostly elementary and middle schools and a few high schools–around the nation to change the way teachers are evaluated, helped to grow professionally, and compensated.
The TAP is a systemic reform of public schools intended to attract, motivate, develop, and retain high-quality talent in the teaching profession. It has four key elements:
- Multiple career paths allow teachers to pursue a variety of positions throughout their careers–career, mentor, and master teacher–depending on their interests, abilities, and accomplishments. As they move up the ranks, their qualifications, roles, and responsibilities increase–and so does their compensation. When teachers take on more responsibilities, they should receive more pay. The old career ladder programs failed because the best teachers were honored with new titles and more work, but with meager, if any, extra pay.
- Performance-based accountability evaluates teachers’ effectiveness through a comprehensive, research-based system that combines such criteria as position responsibilities, classroom observations, and students’ gains in test scores.
- Ongoing applied professional growth requires a change in the school schedule that allows time during the regular school day for teachers to learn, plan, mentor, and share with other teachers so they can constantly improve the quality of their instruction.
- Market-driven compensation allows schools to compensate teachers on