Why do this review? What's in it for me (WIIFM)?
In short — better performance for our students.
A comprehensive compensation system helps us recruit and retain the very best educators, administrators and support-staff. Better motivated people matched with high-quality performance leads to higher student achievement. Please see the superintendent's concept and note how it supports Goal 3 of our Division strategic performance plan: Create an exceptional learning environment.
It is also useful to understand the national context of compensation reform in school divisions. Dr. Allan Odden, a national expert on education reform at the University of Wisconsin, informs that while the current method of school compensation has served education well in the past, there are several reasons why it makes sense to update school compensation to match the needs of the 21st century student:
1. Teacher salary increases often are not linked to organizational needs. The single salary schedule provides salary increments for any type of new skill, even if not directly related to teaching, e.g., a classroom teacher who gets a doctorate in Education Administration. Further, the current system treats teachers as interchangeable pieces. In contrast, effective education reform requires a compensation system that recognizes deep technical expertise and provides a tangible incentive in the form of salary increases when teachers learn the content knowledge and pedagogical strategies needed to teach a more rigorous curriculum well to all students.
2. The public feels the teacher compensation structure rewards mediocrity; changing teacher compensation can reassure the public that we value teacher performance. In the minds of many of the public, teachers earn more pay just for sticking around and taking more classes. Clearly, the pay system itself does not necessarily reward the best teachers, since experience and education units are not always the best predictors of teacher expertise.
With education budgets under scrutiny, there will be a push to find better, more effective, and more efficient ways to use teacher salary dollars. A predictable result would be another round of merit and incentive pay and career ladder proposals, none of which have succeeded in the past. It would be better to identify some new directions, than just react to proposals that have surface appeal but won't work. A new compensation system could base teachers' pay differences on the professional expertise needed to teach all kids to high achievement standards, i.e., a compensation structure that paid teachers for the skills needed to produce high education performance. We could design a compensation system in which the best-paid teachers would be those with the deepest and broadest array of professional expertise.
3. We need mechanisms to stimulate teacher development of knowledge and skills to teach the new curriculum standards that are being promulgated by professional content groups. Research shows that many teachers have neither sufficient subject matter knowledge nor the pedagogical expertise to teach these curricula well. A new compensation system that rewarded teachers for developing those knowledge and skills would be provide an incentive for teachers to focus on these areas, rather than those that might be of personal interest but are not related to improved student achievement.
4. Historically, changes to teacher compensation have followed changes in compensation methods for other types of employees. Non-school organizations have devised new and effective ways to pay people that are more directly related to an organization's current and future knowledge and skill needs. Some examples of these new pay methods are skill-based pay, pay for knowledge, knowledge and skill-based pay, collective performance awards, gain sharing to pay individuals. These strategies improve worker pay, improve worker morale and improve the productivity of the organization, all results desired by education. It's time for education to move in that same direction.
5. New forms of compensation can support the trend in education to identify, develop and recognize accomplished professional practice. These efforts, including the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium, and Praxis, are producing standards for professional teaching practice that can be described, written on paper, and measured both validly and reliably. These standards could provide a way to measure teacher professional competence according to recognized and accepted external standards. These measures could also be used in a revised salary schedule to identify levels of performance or knowledge and skills that must be demonstrated to achieve a pay level or receive a pay increment. (A pay increment for National Board Certification is one example.)
6. New forms of teacher compensation can support standards-based reform. This dominant education reform strategy suggests new norms and values: results orientation, tougher curriculum, and site-based management. For this policy reform, the educational system needs a compensation structure that is aligned to it. Pay for instructional skills could align with skill needs for implementing the new curriculum. Pay for cross-functional skills could align with the new roles for teachers in a site-based managed school. Finally, group rewards for performance increases could align with the results orientated component.
7. New forms of organization, teams, site-based management, contracting out, etc., suggest new ways to organize and manage schools. This implies a need to change compensation if only for more local school site/teacher control over compensation, as in a law firm or a professional corporation.