Rewards, Recruiting Critical for Maintaining Best Possible Teaching Force, Educator Says
by Jim Brown and Jody Brown
September 13, 2004
(AgapePress) - A retired University of Kentucky professor says teacher pay is the most serious problem in public education. However, it's not the amount of money for salaries that he's concerned about.Dr. Marty Solomon believes school districts need to eliminate outmoded compensation systems that give all teachers the same salary increases regardless of their performance. He says public education is the only profession in which a world-class person cannot get promoted.
"In other words, if they're a teacher with seven years of experience and a Bachelor's degree, there's a certain salary box that they go into -- and if they turn out to be the world's greatest teacher, the principal or the superintendent or the school system really has no way to reward them," Solomon says. "The only kind of reward that people might get, in terms of promotions, is to [be promoted] to a principal."
The retired educator advocates a merit pay plan that involves faculty members evaluating the performance of colleagues.
Solomon also believes that in its present form, public education is not capable of attracting the best and brightest college students into the profession. The former counselor for incoming college students says most shy away from pursuing math or education because both professions tend to have lower salaries. That is why Solomon believes schools should set salaries based on what is needed to attract people into certain fields.
"So we might have a salary schedule for math and science teachers, which might be much higher to start with, say, than salaries for elementary school teachers, who are very, very plentiful," he explains. "There's no scarcity of elementary school teachers at most places, but if you want to find a special-ed teacher or a math teacher, you can't find them."
Data from the Economic Policy Institute, an independent think tank in Washington, DC, seems to corroborate Solomon's concerns. EPI reports that teachers earn "significantly less" than comparable workers, and that the wage disadvantage has grown "considerably" over the past decade. Since 1993 (according to EPI) teachers' weekly wages have fallen 11.5 percent behind those of other workers with similar education and experience.
The research organization also says that "the widespread desire in recent years to cut class sizes while simultaneously raising the quality of teachers -- through such measures as No Child Left Behind -- has made the recruiting task only that much more difficult."
