Debate Nirvana

If a teacher is good enough, they won’t need the safety net that tenure provides. So it’s likely the better teachers will decline tenure and in doing so, make more money. This will keep those good teachers in the classroom and also motivate better qualified candidates to join the profession since they will be attracted by the higher salaries. 

According to a recent study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the teaching profession has an average national starting salary of $30,377. Meanwhile, other college graduates who enter fields requiring similar training and responsibilities start at higher salaries:

• Computer programmers start at an average of $43,635,

• Public accounting professionals at $44,668, and

• Registered nurses at $45,570.

Not only do teachers start lower than other professionals, but the more years they put into teaching, the wider the gap gets. A report from NEA Research, which is based on US census data, finds that annual pay for teachers has fallen sharply over the past 60 years in relation to the annual pay of other workers with college degrees. Throughout the nation the average earnings of workers with at least four years of college are now over 50 percent higher than the average earnings of a teacher.

It is very demoralizing to other teachers when they see a senior teacher who is not well regarded, make more money just because of seniority.  Merit based pay systems have been implemented in some school districts and been successful. 

Cincinnati’s public school system, which experimented with performance incentives, persuaded its teachers’ union in 1997 to do a test run of merit pay. Two years later, a ten-school pilot program, designed by administrators and teachers, got under way. Based on how they scored, teachers then wound up in one of five salary categories, with poor teachers making the least money and accomplished teachers the most. The pilot proved successful. A majority of teachers involved found it fair and judged the standards used as appropriate for the whole school district. The city’s board of education adopted it in the spring of 2000.  In 1969, the idea of merit pay emerged in the U.S. due to the Nixon administration and their belief that school accountability should be made a top priority. So, an experiment was initiated which tied school funding and teacher pay to students’ tests scores in Arkansas. The test scores immediately soared and improved dramatically for the state, over 11% higher than the previous year. And the teachers were dutifully rewarded, to have the test scores rise even 7% more the next year.

Aside from examples like Cincinnati and Arkansas, where merit based systems have worked, Peter Kent, vice-president of the Association of School and College Leaders, argues that there is another reason why performance-related pay should replace a system of automatic progression, and that is because it is fairer. “When I was a teacher I used to get frustrated when I felt somebody had moved up the pay scale and didn’t deserve it,” he recalls. “School leaders want a system where people who are performing well are rewarded appropriately.” Performance will not just be measured by exam results. School leaders have been putting together policies which also take in teaching ability, as tested by lesson observations, marking and contribution to the school, in advance of their implementation next September. Making sure the criteria are transparent and there is an appeal mechanism for teachers who have been treated harshly is vital, Kent adds.

Obviously, there are times when a teacher should be fired for the sake of the children.  With tenure, firing a teacher becomes so expensive, that some school districts keep the teachers on, even though they are hurting the children’s education. According to the documentary “Waiting for Superman”, less than twenty teachers were fired in 2010 in the state of Indiana. This is inexcusable, and many more poor teachers are still teaching because tenure complicates the process of them being fired. A June 1, 2009 study by the New Teacher Project found that 81% of administrators said they knew a poorly performing tenured teacher at their school; however, 86% of all the administrators interviewed said they do not always pursue dismissal of teachers because of the costly and time consuming process. According to the NYTimes, it costs an average of $250,000 to try and fire a bad teacher or at least keep them out of the classroom.  In the 2010 documentary film, The Rubber Room teachers who are removed from the classroom but awaiting hearings to see if they can be fired, are put into reassignment centers run by the New York City Department of Education. Allegedly intended to serve as temporary holding facilities for teachers accused of various kinds of misconduct who are awaiting an official hearing, these reassignment centers have become known amongst the "exiled" teachers subculture as "rubber rooms", so named after the padded cells of psychiatric hospitals. More than 600 teachers accused of misconduct have been paid to work full-time doing nothing for months or years at a time while awaiting resolution of their cases. In 2009 alone, New York spent an estimated $30 million to do this, and end up firing only 13 teachers in the end. Additionally, teachers and administrators believe that the tenure system makes it more difficult to improve education, because these bad teachers can’t be weeded out and replaced with better teachers. In an October 1, 2006 survey, 91% of school board presidents either agreed or strongly agreed that tenure impedes the progression of the education of our youth. Also, 60% of those surveyed believed that tenure doesn’t promote fair evaluations. 74% of them said that merit pay would be a healthier alternative to the failed tenure pay.