Can O’ Worms: Eat It, Salary Schedule
For those of you who are not teachers, allow me to explain how I take the dolla’ bills to the bank (all five!): I have a salary schedule. That means that every year I move up one level. If I’ve managed to gain enough continuing education/graduate school credits, I get to move to a new lane that advances a bit faster and starts out with higher numbers.
This is complete garbage, btw. If I fart all day for 180 days and manage to not get fired, I will get raise. Yippee! If I bust my hump assessing, reassessing, planning, crying, learning, and otherwise loving my students, I get… I GET! … the same raise.
I’m not saying I deserve these raises, nor am I saying that I deserve bigger raises. I’m just saying that anything this automatic is ridiculous. If averaging is bad in grading, then why do we tolerate it in our collective bargaining agreements?
We are the borg. Resisting the CBA is futile.
Here’s the article that spawned this post (thanks to @mctownsley for the tweet). I’m going to quote it some, but I suggest you read it in its entirety; you know, for context and all that.
The basic premise is that there’s a magical place in Colorado where teachers get payed more for being good teachers. (a la “Can O’ Worms” as this post’s title)
Check this out:
…If she continues to perform at that level, she will rise to the full Proficient I salary of $48,000 the following year. It would have taken her 14 years and 48 hours of continuing-education credits to reach that grade under the old salary schedule.
Did you read that last sentence? Did you?! This makes Hulk-Cornally start to come out. I’m going to need a new shirt. 14 years! I’ll be lucky if I last that long in this career as a whole. This teacher is going to receive this amount of pay based an assessment of her classroom practices and her students’ levels of achievement — today. The fact that this teacher is actually valued by her district this much, but, through collective bargaining, would have had to wait 14 years and spend several thousand dollars in grad credit to get it really boils my potatoes.
There’s a flip side to this:
Not all teachers have been happy with their placements. Mike Stahl, the executive director of the Pikes Peak Education Association, the regional union affiliate, likens the system to a “beauty contest” that allows principals to handpick favorites for higher placement and pay.
This is exactly what will happen, if the system is set up poorly. Read the comments on the article and you can see that this has already been mentioned:
1- teach the test!
2- teach the assessed content!
3- Give work back for students to correct and only give an A grade!
4- Put a timer in your class and use Piaget (Classical conditioning) for your student-constructed responses! Run your class like a military drill seargant! This will require that we throw away our Tomlinson (differentiated Instruction) and our Marzano (Classroom instrution that (could have) worked! But, what they hey! I can make more money if I train students like a salivating dog!! Let’s do it!and oh yea! Do what your instructional evaluator says. Don’t be creative, spontaneous or inventive. Do what they say, as they say it and you can be the first to reach the top pay scale and get your “A”.
This kind of jaded comment isn’t unfounded, but it sure isn’t useful. It’s fun to play the role of the devil’s advocate pragmatist, but what can we do to make paying teachers make more sense?
What would you do if you were being judged on how well you aligned with your principal’s vision for his/her building? You’d try to align perfectly and at least give lip service to those things that you don’t believe in.
So, what does this require to make it work? It requires a team effort between teachers and administrators to identify the core strategies that make for good education. Oh boo hoo, you’d have to communicate ideas to make each other better teachers; cry me a river, jaded commenter.
The comments on the article are really telling, and are pretty obvious. Here’s the problem: defining what a good teacher is. Here are my solutions:
- A good teacher increases the rate of a student’s achievement. This has nothing to do with the magnitude of the kid’s raw score, only its derivative. (that is, if you have to use std test scores at all… barf) [haha I said, "std"]
- A good teacher implements practices that are supported by research. They also research their own practices for effectiveness through research-in-practice methods.
- A good teachers shows the intangibles necessary for teaching: compassion, love, intuition, flexibility, and the ability not to bite on the play-action.
I want to address point 2. This is the most important step that I feel most districts/teachers are not doing. Whenever this can of worms gets opened everyone starts balking and scoffing or making whatever generally percussive vocal sound they use to show distaste, and that cacophony generally surrounds this idea: all teachers and kids are different, so rigid pay-increase rules using student achievement are bad. This is true. So, shouldn’t it be incumbent upon the teacher to show how they know what they’re are doing is effective for this specific group of kids? Yes. Absolutely.
This is the piece we need to fight for. A framework for individual teachers to prove that their unique (or at least variations of) techniques were chosen for the good of their classroom dynamic. This, coupled with willingness to try new ideas, is a juggernaut of mass education. I’m preaching to choir here, I know.
Am I going to take this to my administration? You bet.
Bring the heat in the comments. Or, better yet, go comment in that article’s comments.
(Paradox-for-the-post: I’m in our teacher’s union. Also, sorry if you’re a union rep. and have been thoroughly offended.)
How I Teach Calculus: A Comedy (Natural Exponent) Half Days Rule
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20 thoughts on “Can O’ Worms: Eat It, Salary Schedule”
via @CohenD http://www.huffingtonpost.com/esther-wojcicki/new-research-shows-merit_b_577886.html
The part that stuck out to me was how rare merit pay actually is. CalcDave asked it and I couldn’t really get past sales (article brings up real estate, but I consider that sales)
Lawyers get billable hours. Surgeons get paid by procedure. I wouldn’t consider either merit pay.
Most trades get paid hourly.
I can’t really think of too many jobs where pay is directly tied to quality of output.
Thanks for the thoughts re: non-academic jobs.
This idea struck me over the weekend: Merit-based pay probably won’t mean more money for salaries, so the current pay will become the “average.” Meaning, many (not necessarily half, but close) teachers will get LESS than what they get now. So, they quit or get fired and then a new (good) teacher comes into the classroom–does the pay scale for the rest of the teachers get reduced to keep the same average? Or will school systems just go bankrupt faster?
Moving schools because the administration is playing favorites is bad on several levels.
1. The amount you get paid is a huge part of whether you get hired or not. Many schools are always in budget crisis mode.
2. A collaborative school and teachers get better the longer they work together.
3. New teachers in new schools must prove themselves (or at least let students get to know them).
@calcdave you pose some good questions on how merit-based pay happens in other businesses. In my experience managing a creative team of software professionals, one thing I can say is there there was no cut-and-dried “system” in place for raises. I based my evaluations on how much better a person made the company, through collaboration, individual performance and initiative. As a manager, this was messy and difficult, but if you’re an effective leader with an eye on how to make a team better, it’s an important part of your job.
Having read that article, I have to say that I think the salary system described in it is the best teacher merit-pay systems I’ve heard of, for many reasons.
1)Salary is based on a combinations of merit measures, both a review by a manager and by test scores. Using a combinational method provides a check and balance for if one method is unfair. Additionally, each of these measures has it’s own checks and balances. Review by a principal are based on classroom visits that are documented in writing. For higher levels, teachers are reviewed by a team. The testing component is based on a variety of tests.
2)Merit pay isn’t being proposed as a fix-all. Additional systems changes, such as increased feedback, are being used to enable teachers to teach better and achieve higher pay rates.
3) The transition to merit-pay is fairly graceful, with no one losing pay, and teachers being consulted on how to implement the system.
4) Principals who make teacher assessments are themselves held accountable to assessments, including teacher review.
5) The system preserves the pay stability that most teachers value by making it harder to go down a category than up.
I just hope that this district is committed enough to actually pay the higher salaries as their teachers get better.
@Kate E: It really seems to be a great system. At least it seems like the most graceful way to do it, anyway.
=shawn
In my previous life I worked concrete construction. Wages are based on supply and demand. When there was lots of work the young, skilled workers could demand a raise.
One man I worked with had been there 40 years and had Parkinson disease. He was paid poorly even though he had been a faithful worker all those years (he was not lazy!)
In good years the skilled workers are able to drive up wages by taking turns asking for a raise. Then the argument was I am worth the same as this other person. But in down times everyone stays pat. In that sense we had collaboration and we worked together in crews to be successful.
But there were always people who were in it for themselves and were backstabbers. I think it is the same in the business world. There are always team players and bakstabbers. There are also always favorites and people who are not liked by management.
The problem with education is that we are not a business. A good teacher does not “make their employer more money.” Since there are always budget issues in education without union protection there is always the fear that districts would fire their most expensive teachers regardless of skills.
I also think teachers who have never worked in this setting do not understand the politics of salaries and raises. Management always tries to keep wages secret. Someone always feels like they are slighted and underpaid leading to lots of jealousy. Schools need teachers who are teammates not jealous of each other.
At least right now I know how much I will make at any given year. I signed up for this system and I can deal with it. I know I am sacrificing earnings when I am young for better pay after I put my time in.
A good teacher implements practices that are supported by research. They also research their own practices for effectiveness through research-in-practice methods.
The foggy thing here (as already implied in a comment above) is that there’s research out there to justify just about any ed practice out there. It’s sometimes difficult for teachers to even know which papers are the bad ones. There’s this example which was spread unthinkingly by bloggers without realizing how dubious the research actually was, or the myriad bad pieces of research on learning styles.
I’d support a merit system something more or less like China where one would have to prove one’s excellence (through collaberation, good research, etc.) to bump up to the next level. I have known far too many issues with administrative cronyism to trust them with the purse. (A lot of the older sorts who are against merit pay aren’t necessarily trying to protect their salary, but far too aware of the dirt behind the scenes.)
@Dylan: Perhaps more collaboration could be fostered through increases in EVERYONE’S salary if the students in the school as a whole does better? We have that (bonus for the school meeting a certain objective). Doesn’t do a thing.
@Jason: Great comment. This is why we blog. I absolutely agree that we must make sure that the research is sound, but I guess I’m advocating a local style of research that shows that teachers is trying to learn his/her students and not just shoving them into the easiest mold.
I love the idea of including collaboration as a part of the pay scale. I’m going to add that to the list.
I feel that this discussion is very important. We need to leave the schedule system behind, but you’re all right, we can’t just jump head long into a subjective system. Thanks!
=shawn
@calcdave Education is so different, because we don’t operate with profit margins and salary incentives based upon how much extra revenue teachers can bring in. Our “products” are our students, not services or deliverables for which customers pay. I’ve worked in both education and corporate environments. When I worked in business, my pay raises for good work were based upon how much extra money I brought to the company. That can’t happen in education where there is a fixed source of funding.
Very tricky stuff. What happens when you run out of delta and your derivative starts to level off? Is that the end of the road? This will be a question on a lot of minds. Yea, I know that there is a huge amount of upside before we get even close to that but it will need to be discussed sooner or later.
I work as a computer programmer and am interested in your blog (and other like it) for several reasons. One, I have three young children so I’m learning what I can about the education system so that I know what they are in for. Additionally as a programmer on a nice sized team I see a lot of parallels between the two professions. The main thought about pay (and quality of work) is that in most areas if you don’t like it you go somewhere else. You quit if your boss “hand picks” who gets the high raises. Why can’t this work for teachers too? Why must teachers feel they are held hostage by the administrators? Can’t the system be changes so that teachers can bail from schools with crappy administration? What is in that can of worms?
My parents are both teachers and much of my extended family is as well and it’s the only “real” job I’ve had. So, how do non-academic jobs do their merit-based pay? Do our complaints here pan out in those kids of jobs? Why is education so different than those places? Are there any “business-world-type” jobs where collaboration is encouraged, but pay scales are different?
I don’t mean for those to be leading questions–just honest ones.
Thanks for this blog post – we need to get all educators talking about this and hashing out the problems with it. I believe merit based pay is coming our way, so let’s help figure out how to make it work. I think it should be much harder to become a teacher, harder to keep your license, higher accountability, and higher salaries to accompany all that. I invite higher expectations all around.
This has been pointed out in other places but its a horse-cart issue. What we really need to work on is teacher evaluation first, then we can figure out how/if we’re going to reward it. Rewards don’t have to be monetary either.
Perhaps more collaboration could be fostered through increases in EVERYONE’S salary if the students in the school as a whole does better?
@Shawn WE know that collaboration helps kids, but there are still those out there who are against collaborating. When Professional Learning Communities were introduced in my district a few years back, there were MANY naysayers who wanted nothing to do with them.
I agree with Jason. I think collaboration will slowly disappear and competition among teachers will cause more resentment among colleagues than some people realize.
I’ll comment more later, but I usually have two problems with merit pay.
1. I don’t know how to implement a merit pay system that would encourage collaboration. That is, if I’m working based on my own student outputs, it reduces my incentive to help my current colleagues. It also reduces my incentives to make certain sacrifices to better my kids in the future. So in science, I might be willing to devote a massive amount of time to reading science research bc I think it will help them in the future. This wouldn’t really help my current value-added.
2. It’s a little insulting. The vast majority of teachers (at least at my school) are pretty much maxed out. I certainly wouldn’t say they’re all good teachers, but they’re mostly working hard. Merit pay assumes that I would work harder if I got paid. Most of us can’t. It’s not the effort, it’s the ability.
I like the removing incentives option.
Raise base pay, but make it easier to fire teachers.
@Jason: I would say that collaboration would be a part of the equation. If it helps you, it helps the kids, which helps your pay. Although, and I hope this is apparent from the post, I’m really not in love with the idea of including test scores in this equation at all. Second, I know we all feel maxed out, but is it energy being expended in the right area? Wouldn’t it be great if our administrators were helping us to determine that? It also might say that you being maxed out is already at a higher level of pay, and you don’t need to add anything extra, which is how I feel sometimes. great comment, thanks!
=shawn
I have a few points of contention with some of your solutions for determining effectiveness.
First, how do you define student achievement? I can see how this is possible in a mathematics classroom, where SBG can make it clear which concepts students are learning…but SBG is not a universal method of assessment. Besides, how do you differentiate between students who actually learn the material, and students who are adept at memorizing formulas and using their calculator. This doesn’t even get into the issue if less objective courses, such as art education.
As for your second point, I somewhat agree, but what if a teacher is using bad research as the basis for their teaching? What if the research is based on bad methodology or the results are not statistically significant (or is not based on any quantitative measures at all)? Teachers are not necessarily trained to decipher such studies. It would essentially allow teachers to use any teaching methods they come across, regardless of whether its effectiveness is verified.
The third solution you give could be at the whim of administrators, since such characteristics as flexibility and compassion are entirely subjective.
To be honest, I don’t have any alternative solutions. The problem with determining the effectiveness of teachers is that there is no concrete definition of what the goal of a teacher should be. Higher test scores? Independent projects?
Of course, if you twisted my arm, I would have to agree with your first two solutions. However, the lack of concreteness in the solutions (and the question itself) really bothers me.
In addition to the examples listed above, I’m also concerned about how to evaluate teachers for merit pay. If assessments are the rule, what about specialists? I teach elem vocal music. In addition to learning all the music objectives, my students also learn math, science, world cultures, reading, world languages… you name it. The difference in my class is that we learn to make connections through them all. But there is no state music assessment. Does that mean I won’t be eligible for pay raises? What if the kids I teach score better on math tests? Is it only because of their classroom teacher who teaches math, or do I have some influence when they use math in music? Who gets the “reward?”
My administrator admits he is not strong in music. How will he evaluate if my students are progressing in their music studies? He sees my teaching and is wonderful about giving me feedback about my teaching strategies and classroom management. He commends me for the work my kids do in class and at school programs… but does he really know if my kids are learning what they are expected to know in my class? I don’t know.
I agree with you that the pay matrix is outdated, but I’m not sure I’ve yet seen a merit pay system that is fair. I worry about what merit pay will do for collaboration and rapport among teachers. It seems like competition will be higher, and that doesn’t mean good things for ALL kids.