How would the nation’s school system be different if teachers were paid like engineers?
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan proposed last month that a significant boost in teacher salaries could transform public schools for the better by luring the country’s brightest college graduates into the profession.
Teachers should be paid a starting salary of $60,000, Duncan said, with the opportunity to make up to $150,000 a year. That’s higher than the salaries of most high school principals, who are generally paid much more than teachers.
The median salary among all middle school teachers, for example, not just those starting out in the profession, is around $52,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Would paying teachers 2 to 3 times more money mean that students would learn more? We don’t know. But smaller raises of 20 percent or less have been ineffective, and one New York City school that embraced much higher pay has so far underperformed on state tests.
“It will cost money—and—given the current political climate with the nation wrestling with debt and deficits—I am sure some people will immediately say that we can’t afford it without even looking at how to redirect the money we are already spending—and mis-spending,” Duncan said at the at a conference sponsored by the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards.
Duncan’s office would not offer further details about how a school district could redirect money to teachers’ salaries or whether Duncan had any specific plans to encourage such sweeping salary changes.
But Duncan’s idea has been tried on a smaller scale, which helps us to try to predict what changes a radical increase in teacher salaries nationwide might have on education.
There is not a lot of research that shows the effect of higher pay on teacher performance, retention and satisfaction. This is in part because public school teachers are compensated fairly uniformly around the country.
