The Importance of Teacher Quality
      Research has shown that teacher quality is a crucial variable in the academic gains made by a child in a particular year. Within a school, a student’s performance varies dramatically based on the quality of his teacher; between schools, the average qualifications and experience of teachers is disparate between urban and suburban schools. Multiple research findings that show that effective teachers can offset or even eliminate the disadvantage of a low-socioeconomic background, while ineffective teachers put students even further behind. Unfortunately, the factors that currently influence the hiring and salaries of teachers have been shown to be poor predictors of a teacher’s ability to improve the test scores of his or her students; neither state certification, an education degree, nor extensive experience have any consistent statistical correlation with a teacher’s effectiveness. SAT scores and the quality of the institution a teacher attended do seem to be somewhat accurate predictors of teacher ability. The most accurate statistical evidence that a teacher will improve her student’s test scores is successful past performance – good teachers continue to be good teachers. In order to cultivate a staff of effective teachers, principals and school districts should have the ability to evaluate their employees and selectively reward and retain those who are best at teaching students. For diverse reasons, including low levels of professional autonomy and prestige and comparatively low salaries, the current candidates attracted to teaching positions tend to be from the bottom third of their college class and to have attended less-competitive institutions. The education sector faces the additional issue of a serious teaching shortage, especially in hard-to-staff urban areas and in subjects like math and science.
      Efforts to attract more talented teachers and improve teacher effectiveness have included raising the salary of all teachers, increased professional development efforts, more structured curriculum to reduce variation between teachers, and strict certification requirements and tests. To best alleviate teaching shortages, attract talented individuals, and retain those who are most effective in the classroom, teacher salaries should be increased through the vehicle of significant performance-based pay.
Similar Policies That Are Already In Place
      Efforts to implement merit pay policies have been hampered by the strong union influence that has resisted merit pay efforts on both the state and local level. In addition, funding remains a serious issue.
      Under the leadership of Chancellor Michelle Rhee, the DC Public School District has designed an alternate pay structure that would reward teachers for their performance with much higher salaries. Teachers who select to participate in this alternate program would sacrifice the job security guaranteed by the strict tenure rules laid out in their union contract. The current lockstep salary schedule and tenure structure would remain in place alongside the new payment program for the time being. The district has been locked in negotiations for almost two years with the local branch of the American Federation of Teachers, who oppose the new policy. Because funding for this program comes from private donors, the policy as it currently is designed would not be sustainable over the long term.
      Texas and other states have initiated merit pay programs that grant annual bonuses to teachers in specified districts (in some cases, those that elect to participate, in others, districts are chosen because they have low-performing schools) if their students achieve a certain passing rate or measure of improvement on the state’s standardized tests. These programs function alongside the existing fixed salary ladder delineated in the union contract and do not allow any flexibility in firing ineffective teachers. They also do not increase the salary of teachers to a level that would attract significant new interest in teaching positions.
A Functional Teacher Merit Pay Policy
      Prospects for the success of teacher merit pay programs are hampered nationwide by strict union contracts, some of which currently expressly forbid compensation (and termination) based on student performance on standardized tests. The resistance from unions does have some merit: at least one study has shown that categorizing teachers based on the test performance of their students (even when used complicated statistical analyses that adjust to assess only the “value-added” in a particular school year) can have ambiguous results, with some teachers scoring in the top quartile one year and the bottom quartile the next. Because of this, it is crucial that evaluation of the teacher be based on multiple factors, including an input by the department head, principal, and an independent district evaluator who performs classroom observation. Consideration of test scores should be important, but in the context of overall performance (not a single years’ scores) and the dynamics of the particular students in a teacher’s class. The performance-based pay should be in the form of salary increases and yearly bonuses based on a teacher’s effectiveness and annual evaluations, not a fixed bonus allotted to all teachers whose classes reach a certain benchmark on the state’s standardized tests. This policy will not be effective without an accompanying shift in employment policies: teachers who are consistently failing to achieve improvement in student performance are harmful to student and should not be retained as employees.
Resources and Roadblocks
      This policy requires substantial increased funding for education. Because of the evidence that teacher quality is a central factor in improving student achievement, increases in funding for the education sector should be directed toward increasing teacher quality. Performance-based pay for teachers is one of the most promising policies for achieving this goal.
      At the moment, union contracts across the nation follow a similar structure and severely limit the autonomy of school districts and principals in their efforts to build an effective teaching staff. As mentioned above, many contracts explicitly forbid a district from awarding bonuses and making employment decisions based on student performance. Once a teacher attains tenure (usually after 2 or 3 years), it is virtually impossible for a district to fire that teacher, barring some type of illegal behavior. Because teachers do improve in performance over their first few years of teaching and because several years of data and evaluation should be used in assessing teacher effectiveness, these limitations prevents administrators from selectively retaining the best teachers.
      A functional merit pay policy requires reformed union contracts that allow for flexibility in salaries instead of a mandated pay ladder that calculates compensation based on seniority. These reformed contracts must also sacrifice some of the job security that teachers currently take for granted; while termination of a teacher should still be taken seriously and subject to challenge from the union, such a decision should be upheld if the district can make a reasonable case that the teacher was not improving student achievement or could be replaced with an even more effective teacher.