Cutting-Edge commentary on K-12 education.

A Forum on Paying Teachers Properly

For more than a century, public education has worked with a single salary schedule that compensates teachers for college credits, education degrees, and years of experience--but not for their effectiveness in the classroom.

Research shows that the degrees, courses, and experience that teachers have, beyond the first few years of teaching, are unrelated to how much their students achieve. The uniform salary schedule does not take into account that teachers work in schools offering different levels of nonmonetary benefits, such as a safe environment and students with different levels of preparation and home support. Nor does it allow for extra pay for those in hard-to-staff fields, such as math and science. But any pay- for-performance plan in K-12 education will succeed only if teachers buy into it from the start, if it is fair, and if it is embedded in a systemic reform that encourages teachers to become better at their craft.

The Moral Imperative

Are schools effective that take character education reform seriously?

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