Why Not Create the $100,000 Teacher?
Good teachers are to education what education is to all other professions--the indispensable element, the sunlight and oxygen, the foundation on which everything else is built. However, is an outstanding teacher worth a $100,000 annual salary? I say yes. Fortunately, there’s a way to pay that price--while also providing high-caliber teaching talent with the working conditions, influence and status they deserve--without materially increasing school personnel budgets.
A recent report by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning underscores the teacher-quality crisis in California. Yet its recommendations, while worthy, do not go far enough. The solution is to create multitiered staffing opportunities that increase salary flexibility, open up new career-growth paths and provide ongoing professional development opportunities. By providing greater rewards and motivations for quality teaching, this strategy makes the profession competitive with other industries scrambling to recruit scarce human capital in our increasingly knowledge-based economy.
Most critically, these reforms seek to remedy the quality crisis confronting a profession already facing a shortage of nearly 1 million teachers over the next decade. Too many potential teachers today score at the bottom of high-stakes exams when compared to students considering other careers, a problem made worse by low expectations: Very few state teacher-licensing exams require a passing score above the 25th percentile in reading, writing or math. And new teachers who do enter the classroom are likely to leave within the first five years. One report found that leading the exodus are those teachers who scored highest on exams.
Under a differentiated staffing model, the salary budget at a typical elementary school wouldn’t change. What would change is the range of salaries, now averaging $42,600 nationally, as well as the responsibilities, training requirements and career paths for the teaching staff. With at least a community college degree, “learning guides” could join the profession as entry-level paraprofessionals earning up to $21,000 annually. Those with a bachelor’s degree and credential could undergo a mandatory, salaried one-year induction with intensive mentoring to become associate teachers. With additional experience, qualifications and superior performance, these individuals could rise to mentor positions, which would carry greater responsibilities, require longer hours and might pay as much as $60,000.
The most exemplary teaching professional could strive even higher, to the status of master teacher. This new professional elite would serve not just as classroom instructors but also as models and mentors at the school and in the broader community. While requirements would be stringent, including at least a master’s degree and national certification, master teachers could earn as much as $80,000 for 75% of their time, 11 months a year. Master teachers would be free to pursue outside jobs, including in private industry and university teacher training programs, which could easily bring the total salary to more than $100,000 per year.
This differentiated staffing and salary model involves some trade-offs. Market-driven pay ranges would replace lock-step salary structures to reward performance and attract teachers to hard-to-staff subjects or schools. Certification requirements would need to be reformed so that mid-career professionals could enter teaching through rigorous assessments and classroom demonstration, rather than through lengthy and expensive training that too often stresses theory and course work over clinical classroom experience. To maintain high standards and to determine advancement, teachers would sign three-year contracts and have to requalify for their positions every five years. Schools also would have to impose performance-based accountability systems through rigorous and respected certification examinations and demonstrations, as well as by careful consideration of student progress.
The trade-offs bring clear advantages. Higher salaries, expanded opportunities and performance-based accountability would give the profession more respect. New staffing structures and clustered student instruction provide time for daily professional development that encourages collaboration and reduces isolation. The advantage is clearest for students: They would have access to a markedly improved teacher corps.
To achieve this, we need hundreds of thousands more high-caliber teachers, and we need to persuade the best already in the profession to stay. That can be accomplished only by adopting bold new structures and models for the teaching profession.
