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Should teachers be paid purely based on years of experience?

Should teachers be paid purely based on years of experience?

  • Yes, they should be paid more each year they teach.

    Votes: 3 9.4%

  • No (please explain how you think they should be paid)

    Votes: 29 90.6%
  • Total voters
    32
megaprogman said:
This would have to be based on the assumption that only one or two of those students are having issues though.
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If Teacher A and Teacher B are teaching similar classes with similar demographics in the same school, there's no reason to expect that any of these external circumstances would harm the performance of one teacher's class more than the other's. In the aggregate, they should have roughly the same number of students who had the same problems, if the students were randomly assigned to one class or the other.

megaprogman said:
Also, it is incredibly unfair to blame a teacher for something that is beyond their control.
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Not nearly as unfair as not instituting merit pay unless it is perfect, thus ensuring that more students get a substandard education. Ultimately, the reason the schools exist is to educate the students, not to provide jobs for the teachers. Therefore any concern about how merit pay could lead to unfairness is a secondary concern at best.
 
Kandahar said:
If Teacher A and Teacher B are teaching similar classes with similar demographics in the same school, there's no reason to expect that any of these external circumstances would harm the performance of one teacher's class more than the other's. In the aggregate, they should have roughly the same number of students who had the same problems, if the students were randomly assigned to one class or the other.
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Perhaps if its a five year moving average or something like that. I don't think 25 student's is enough to really iron out the occasional noise as 4% (100%/25students) can make a huge difference here.

Kandahar said:
Not nearly as unfair as not instituting merit pay unless it is perfect, thus ensuring that more students get a substandard education. Ultimately, the reason the schools exist is to educate the students, not to provide jobs for the teachers. Therefore any concern about how merit pay could lead to unfairness is a secondary concern at best.
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I disagree. Part of any successful system is one that is going to attempt to attract adequate talent to the profession. If the system is structured against the people performing the duties, you will see that impact on quality.
 
The Giant Noodle said:
Teachers in Illinois are FAR overpaid. WAAAAAY overpaid. NO pension! And they should be paid per MONTH. To me their yearly pay based on 9 months of service should be no more than $40K. PLUS they should pay for their health insurance like the rest of America. 20% of their pay should go to health insurance. These people dont do it because they LOVE it (for the most part). They do it because of the AWESOME pay, pension, benefits and 3 months off. And its a fairly EASY JOB!!!!!!
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I didn't vote 'cause I didn't like any of the options. And I copied Noodle's post because it SO bears repeating. Illinois is a mess!!!

That aside, my suggestions would be:

A combination of experiential (up to five years) and merit increases with a built-in maximum allowed per year.
Determine performance based on a weighted combination of standardized test results, administrator ratings, student ratings (high school), parent ratings. Maybe, right off the top, test results make up 90%, the other three make up 10%.
Abolish tenure.

After five years' experience, one's base is set. One would have to have something in place that would allow the base to move as the starting salary increased.

All pensions designed like the private sector. Defined contribution rather than defined benefit. (Defined benefit is what's absolutely KILLED Illinois.)

All teacher salary information published each year and distributed to the community-at-large.
 
Kandahar said:
No. There are ways to control for those variables, so that a teacher's performance is based on the IMPROVEMENT in their students' abilities (relative to how much an average teacher would have got the same students to improve).

I understand that standardized tests are no panacea, but they are the best measurement tool that we have at the present time. If you know of a better one, by all means suggest it. But we need to have SOME kind of quantitative measurement. It is very difficult to improve things if we have no way of measuring success or failure.
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I'm honestly struggling to understand how your reply (you quoted me) and question for me to suggest an "alternative measurement tool" relates to what I said?

As Jamesrage alludes above - Teachers coach students and head teachers try to ensure that groups are put together to ensure the best test results for their school. Education should not be driven by test results but by what the learners / students / children gain in the mid to long term from the experience and the current desire to test and measure everything is (in my opinion) one of the worst things to happen to education. All I'd ask for is a bit longer for the rotation of the habitual education cycles that we get subjected to. Academic students should be tested through educational tests while vocational students should be tested through appropriate vocational assignments.

For the record, I work in education and have seen standardised tests / coursework grades / targets for students / targets for teachers etc come round at least twice in my teaching career - so in relation to your question - I've been subjected and or asked to apply a variety of measures as different politicians come through and different education "theory" comes in and out of vogue. I've worked with learners / students / children (whatever the in-vogue term is) who had grade A and those who scraped through by sheer luck - the difference is nearly always what happens at home in terms of encouragement and involvement with education - and nobody ever tests that when coming up with a new theory that we educators will then have to jump through and apply to our practice.
 
Infinite Chaos said:
I'm honestly struggling to understand how your reply (you quoted me) and question for me to suggest an "alternative measurement tool" relates to what I said?
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The problem is that there are no good measurement tool, but this does not mean we should use a bad one in order to use something.
 
And then there's me who can't quite decide what model is best....
 
megaprogman said:
Merit pay doesn't seem to work : Study: Bonuses for teachers don't boost test scores | McClatchy
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I see a few problems with drawing that conclusion from a single, narrow study:

1. It was too small in scope. 296 teachers in Nashville are simply not enough data to draw such a sweeping conclusion, as the study's authors themselves acknowledged.
2. It was not drastic enough. Offering bonuses of $5K, $10K, or $15K - compared to the teacher's base salary which is probably at least $40K on average - isn't enough.
3. The study misses (what I consider to be) the point of merit pay: To encourage more talented people to enter the profession in the first place as opposed to more lucrative fields...not to wave cash at teachers to get them to work harder. A temporary study lasting a few years will obviously have no impact on this, since a new teacher can't just choose to join in the middle of this study (I assume).
4. The study measures only half of the consequences of merit pay. Good teachers will get bonuses, but just as importantly, bad teachers will get the axe or at least be harmed financially.
5. The article isn't clear how improvement was calculated. If it was based simply on year-over-year test scores, that may not be a sufficient discriminator. Analytic software can and should account for inherent differences among the teachers' classes.


In my view, the potential for some small cash bonuses to existing teachers will not necessarily improve test scores, because they may simply not know how. Presumably (and maybe I'm being too generous here) most teachers WANT their students to do well...even the bad teachers. If they think that their methods are the best, a cash incentive won't necessarily change their opinion. They may simply not recognize that what they are doing does not help the students.

What merit pay does is allow an evolutionary mechanism to work its magic on our school systems over time. The best teachers will earn a lot of money, other teachers will try to emulate them, and talented people will enter the profession knowing that they can earn large salaries. The worst teachers will be fired, or will earn very little money and leave via attrition. Over time, the talent pool will improve.
 
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Kandahar said:
In my view, the potential for some small cash bonuses to existing teachers will not necessarily improve test scores, because they may simply not know how. Presumably (and maybe I'm being too generous here) most teachers WANT their students to do well...even the bad teachers. If they think that their methods are the best, a cash incentive won't necessarily change their opinion. They may simply not recognize that what they are doing does not help the students.
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I think this statement is one of the major keys to the problem. Right now the education field has experts come in and tell teachers how to teach when each school should system should pay their best teachers extra to do that job.
 
Figuring out the exact standard is more complicated than it would appear. I believe that some form of merit should be involved. However, many of our young people who go directly into teaching require time to develop their creativity, technique, and experience. By the same token, their are teachers who have been teaching for many years who may be of more help providing mentoring than in the classroom itself. We are in a time when people want to make decisions based on one definitive standard. We need to use our brains to figure out creative ways to get the best use out of those individuals who have chosen this field. And yes, that means that some should be removed from the classroom. We are often slow in implementing those steps that are best for our children. Simple seniority is not the answer.
 
If one thinks about it, the problem starts with "How do we teach our teachers to teach?" And the solution starts right there.

Learning should be challenging and FUN!!! One only has to look at how kids master video games. And absolutely love the process by which they learn. They dive in and swim. "Open this book. Read these chapters. Take this test." There's GOT to be a better way!

I honestly think we have to look at our whole core curriculum. What's necessary? What's not? What subjects taught will graduate a child from high school and have them ready to live their lives? To make decisions on whether or not higher education is for them; or if it's trade school; or something else.

One thing that Kandahar said that resonated with me BIG time was that you can't just pay teachers more to make them better teachers. In fact, THAT way is 100% wrong. The whole idea is to attract creative dedicated people TO the profession. And, just as important, give them the tools to MOTIVATE students and make learning fun. BECAUSE IT IS!!
 
MaggieD said:
If one thinks about it, the problem starts with "How do we teach our teachers to teach?" And the solution starts right there.

Learning should be challenging and FUN!!! One only has to look at how kids master video games. And absolutely love the process by which they learn. They dive in and swim. "Open this book. Read these chapters. Take this test." There's GOT to be a better way!

I honestly think we have to look at our whole core curriculum. What's necessary? What's not? What subjects taught will graduate a child from high school and have them ready to live their lives? To make decisions on whether or not higher education is for them; or if it's trade school; or something else.

One thing that Kandahar said that resonated with me BIG time was that you can't just pay teachers more to make them better teachers. In fact, THAT way is 100% wrong. The whole idea is to attract creative dedicated people TO the profession. And, just as important, give them the tools to MOTIVATE students and make learning fun. BECAUSE IT IS!!
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I totally agree. Great post. Throughout the years, most people I know got into their profession because a teacher was able to inspire them and make the subject come alive. I believe in experiential learning and before a person can learn you have to envolve them in the subject. Again, great job.
 
Mellie said:
Simple question. Maybe a simple answer.

Should teachers be paid purely based on years of experience?

If so, why?
If not, how would you revamp the salary schedules if you were in charge?
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I pick "Other."

I don't mind teachers being paid on the years they've worked for the school system. After all, there's so many factors regarding education that it shouldn't be put all on the teachers. And considering the amount of crap they have to put up with, I don't mind it if they earn tenure.

On the other hand, I think we should have some reforms with regards to the public education system. These are:

1) Have school boards comprised of an equal number of teachers, administrators, children, and the parents of children. After all, I don't see why some politician who doesn't have a stake in the public education system should be allowed to be a representative on it and make policy for it.

2) Pay students to learn. We've poured so much money into computers and teacher salaries and programs and equipment that we have forgotten who we're doing this for: the children. So start pouring money into the children directly. Give them a reason to apply themselves. I would do a 10% cut of all public education programs and salaries to administrators and use that money to set up a fund to pay students for their performance. This way, students will apply themselves more and they can earn money themselves for things instead of having it given to them by the school. After all, the students won't care how much money the teachers get, so targeting teacher salaries is ignorant and stupid. Rather, target student salaries by creating them.

3) Create year-round school programs. Allow parents to opt their students in for summer school in order to review what they went through the year before and to help prepare them for what they'll learn in the next year. Students forget a lot of schooling during the summer months. Allow students the opportunity to go year round if their parents choose to in order to better their education.

4) Teach to the talents of the children. I keep hearing how children in the U.S. school system are below average in science and math when it comes to children in other school systems. Yeah, well, the thing is not every child is going to be good in all subjects. Some children just don't get math. It can take a while to understand things mathematically. As for science, kids will start taking more of an interest in science when we let them experiment on their own. Let kids do chemical reactions. Let kids cut animals up. Let kids make household explosives. That'll get them to understand practical applications of science. Until then, STFU about it and teach them the stuff they do get, like literature, music, and art.

5) After school internships. Place high schoolers in internships for their chosen career path. Help young writers get positions in the news media or with a publishing company. Help young lawyers do work for established attorneys. Show young law enforcement officers how police procedures and forensics work. There's only so much of sitting in a desk and listening to a guy drone on that a child can learn from until they have to actually go out into the world and get some practical experience. Let them get a taste of the real world before we throw them out into it. Street smarts is just as important as book smarts.
 
samsmart said:
I pick "Other."

I don't mind teachers being paid on the years they've worked for the school system. After all, there's so many factors regarding education that it shouldn't be put all on the teachers. And considering the amount of crap they have to put up with, I don't mind it if they earn tenure.

On the other hand, I think we should have some reforms with regards to the public education system. These are:

1) Have school boards comprised of an equal number of teachers, administrators, children, and the parents of children. After all, I don't see why some politician who doesn't have a stake in the public education system should be allowed to be a representative on it and make policy for it.

2) Pay students to learn. We've poured so much money into computers and teacher salaries and programs and equipment that we have forgotten who we're doing this for: the children. So start pouring money into the children directly. Give them a reason to apply themselves. I would do a 10% cut of all public education programs and salaries to administrators and use that money to set up a fund to pay students for their performance. This way, students will apply themselves more and they can earn money themselves for things instead of having it given to them by the school. After all, the students won't care how much money the teachers get, so targeting teacher salaries is ignorant and stupid. Rather, target student salaries by creating them.

3) Create year-round school programs. Allow parents to opt their students in for summer school in order to review what they went through the year before and to help prepare them for what they'll learn in the next year. Students forget a lot of schooling during the summer months. Allow students the opportunity to go year round if their parents choose to in order to better their education.

4) Teach to the talents of the children. I keep hearing how children in the U.S. school system are below average in science and math when it comes to children in other school systems. Yeah, well, the thing is not every child is going to be good in all subjects. Some children just don't get math. It can take a while to understand things mathematically. As for science, kids will start taking more of an interest in science when we let them experiment on their own. Let kids do chemical reactions. Let kids cut animals up. Let kids make household explosives. That'll get them to understand practical applications of science. Until then, STFU about it and teach them the stuff they do get, like literature, music, and art.

5) After school internships. Place high schoolers in internships for their chosen career path. Help young writers get positions in the news media or with a publishing company. Help young lawyers do work for established attorneys. Show young law enforcement officers how police procedures and forensics work. There's only so much of sitting in a desk and listening to a guy drone on that a child can learn from until they have to actually go out into the world and get some practical experience. Let them get a taste of the real world before we throw them out into it. Street smarts is just as important as book smarts.
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kudos for that post
we are operating our education system as we did in the late 1800's when our nation was an agrarian society, needing hands in the field during the summer
our kids need to be learning in the summer. we already have the facilities, we pay the teachers by year, so the additional cost to expand the students' learning year would be nominal
how does one evaulate a teacher of an affluent student body with lots of support in the homes to the teacher who is charged with teaching kids from the project, with often unsupportive, uneducated, single parents with meager incomes. in this age of the internet, why would anyone not expect the kid who can google references to fulfill homework assignments to outperfrom the kid without access to a computer or the web where they live
a couple of bogus points have been argued. one, that out teachers are paid too much. until the great recession, our schools were begging for teachers. when the economy recovers, it will again. rarely can you attract talent by poorly compensating it. being acquainted with a number of teach for America teachers, they find that the weak administration is as demotivating as the inferior pay
another bogus position being argued is that teachers cannot be fired. bull****. the weak teachers who are not fired are allowed to remain in the classrooms, wasting our childrens' time - because the administration is too incompetent to do what is needed to document and terminate those ineffective teachers
if one looks at the compensation of teachers by state and then looks at the student performance data, the states paying the higher teacher salaries tend to also have the most successful students. those states with weak performing students are also those which tend to compensate their teachers the least
that data also holds true internationally. you get what you pay for. notice the following graphs showing that American teachers teach the most hours internationally, but are certainly not the best compensated, either in raw wage or when compared to GDP per capita
teachersalarybycountrygraph.jpg

teachersalarybygdpbycountrygraph.jpg

teachinghoursbycountrygraph.jpg
 
I was planning on going to graduate school during the summers. Jerks :D
 
Fiddytree said:
I was planning on going to graduate school during the summers. Jerks :D
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Well, if it makes you feel any better, I also advocate starting lessons later in the day. While schools may have to start just as early as it always does so parents can get to their jobs, lessons should start later when the children are actually awake and active enough to be able to retain what they're taught. So maybe you could just take morning classes. :)
 
“Simple question. Maybe a simple answer.
Should teachers be paid purely based on years of experience?
If so, why?
If not, how would you revamp the salary schedules if you were in charge?” - Mellie

Teachers should be paid based strictly on merit. If they do not perform--fire them. If they perform well then compensate them appropriately. Let them treat their jobs as though they were actual, “real-life” jobs that the rest of us are expected to perform with the acknowledgement from the rest of us that since these people are working directly with our children they must always be held to a higher-standard.

My unfortunate experience in getting to know teachers over the years is that they seem to be the “bottom of the barrel” as far as “academic achievers” go and yet these same people are employed to teach our children while often times more qualified people are barred from teaching.

I do believe that this is a problem that can’t be fixed until the teachers unions are outlawed. Until then, nothing of consequence is going to happen and parents only option will be for private school which is not something most people can afford.
 
samsmart said:
Well, if it makes you feel any better, I also advocate starting lessons later in the day. While schools may have to start just as early as it always does so parents can get to their jobs, lessons should start later when the children are actually awake and active enough to be able to retain what they're taught. So maybe you could just take morning classes. :)
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Perhaps, but perhaps not. Maybe not with History graduate school. Need a great deal of time for research and writing. Non-thesis options still require a decent portion of 15-30 page papers per course.

Now, if I were going to graduate school specifically in the education fields, then perhaps so. However, I was approached to think about some sort of hybrid, where I could possibly research historical trends in education and so forth, perhaps even an intellectual history of education.

We do have to keep in mind a large portion of teachers can identify with the notion that, "I can't recall the last time I had free time." But, my approach to graduate school seemed like the best idea, should I still be in line for positions, even though the economy is the way it is, and people may be putting off retiring in order to better accomodate for the circumstances. We are in the situation of having a massive amount of educators retiring over the next several years. I'm in a prime situation to suck up some jobs, but I have to wait and see. Perhaps I'll just move straight to graduate school.
 
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I agree with alot of what you have to say. One problem. The schools are already tight in terms of funds. I like the idea of year round schools but people are going to have to be willing to pay for them. And with all the anger and fervor in our society there are few people who would support the proposal.
 
snbl11225 said:
I agree with alot of what you have to say. One problem. The schools are already tight in terms of funds. I like the idea of year round schools but people are going to have to be willing to pay for them. And with all the anger and fervor in our society there are few people who would support the proposal.
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Well, go a few years without any public school at all, have all those kids out on the street causing trouble, they'll get in a fervor then and realize the importance of paying taxes.
 
Well, and like everything else, there are benefits and detractions from every change in education. A year long school academic calendar can have moments of making sure students are keeping to task with the curriculum, because of the more frequent breaks. Then again, it could allow for more unit plan design, and some perhaps much needed easing of an instructor's schedule. If, for instance, a longer day-to-day schedule were introduced, if properly used, could allow for more content covered or more team building exercises. Then, for parents, maybe if the school day is longer, the end of the day is roughly the same time parents get off work. Then, again, perhaps parents will yearn for the moment where they have enough time with their child instead of being not seeing them as much as they want. Then again, if anyone here is Catholic, if improperly employed, could lead to a feeling of being that young kid being stuck in a 2 hour or longer mass rather than the already somewhat excruciating hour found in every Sunday.

Don't expect miracle pills. :D
 
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samsmart said:
I don't mind teachers being paid on the years they've worked for the school system. After all, there's so many factors regarding education that it shouldn't be put all on the teachers. And considering the amount of crap they have to put up with, I don't mind it if they earn tenure.
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I think this is exactly the wrong mindset, if I understood you correctly. It's still teacher-focused rather than student-focused: A teacher should get tenure simply because they have to "put up with crap," rather than because it will actually help the students. I think we need to stamp out that mindset entirely in our education system. It exists to educate students, not to provide teachers with jobs.

samsmart said:
2) Pay students to learn. We've poured so much money into computers and teacher salaries and programs and equipment that we have forgotten who we're doing this for: the children. So start pouring money into the children directly. Give them a reason to apply themselves. I would do a 10% cut of all public education programs and salaries to administrators and use that money to set up a fund to pay students for their performance. This way, students will apply themselves more and they can earn money themselves for things instead of having it given to them by the school. After all, the students won't care how much money the teachers get, so targeting teacher salaries is ignorant and stupid. Rather, target student salaries by creating them.
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I like this idea a lot. I think we had a thread about this a couple months ago too. I think it would definitely at least be worthwhile to see if something like this was effective at raising student performance. My hunch is that it would be.

samsmart said:
3) Create year-round school programs. Allow parents to opt their students in for summer school in order to review what they went through the year before and to help prepare them for what they'll learn in the next year. Students forget a lot of schooling during the summer months. Allow students the opportunity to go year round if their parents choose to in order to better their education.
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I agree. Our school years are too short...among the shortest in the world. And along the same lines, I think that the school day is too short. When I was in school it was only 7 hours (including lunch). In "Waiting For Superman," Bill Gates suggested that a longer school day would not only allow more time for education, but it would get kids in the mindset that school was the primary thing that they were doing each day.

samsmart said:
4) Teach to the talents of the children. I keep hearing how children in the U.S. school system are below average in science and math when it comes to children in other school systems. Yeah, well, the thing is not every child is going to be good in all subjects. Some children just don't get math. It can take a while to understand things mathematically. As for science, kids will start taking more of an interest in science when we let them experiment on their own. Let kids do chemical reactions. Let kids cut animals up. Let kids make household explosives. That'll get them to understand practical applications of science. Until then, STFU about it and teach them the stuff they do get, like literature, music, and art.
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Ehh...I half-agree. It's important to teach kids stuff that they're interested in, to keep them motivated to do well. But I think it's wrong to write off students as simply "not being good in math." Especially before they get to high school. From K-8, I think it's important to teach students all the core subjects whether they are good at them or not. Everyone needs to know how to do some basic math.

samsmart said:
5) After school internships. Place high schoolers in internships for their chosen career path. Help young writers get positions in the news media or with a publishing company. Help young lawyers do work for established attorneys. Show young law enforcement officers how police procedures and forensics work. There's only so much of sitting in a desk and listening to a guy drone on that a child can learn from until they have to actually go out into the world and get some practical experience. Let them get a taste of the real world before we throw them out into it. Street smarts is just as important as book smarts.
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This is a good idea too. I think that high schools should do more in terms of preparing people for "the real world," whether that be college or vocational training.
 
Kandahar said:
Their salaries should be based entirely on merit. Not on years of experience, or advanced degrees, or anything else. We pretty much have the worst possible system right now. Paying people the same regardless of performance (and making it impossible to fire the worst performers) pretty much guarantees that we'll get mediocrity.
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Entirely on merit? How will you get good teachers to work in the bad schools?
 
earthworm said:
Interesting.
Experience does have a value, but more in some professions than others.
Being an effective teacher is a gift from heaven, the idea is to quickly detect this and use it to its fullest..I do not think that 1000 tests and 100 years of experience will change this. .
Maybe it is also a gift that makes it possible for another man to see this..
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Had a boss once who said that there is a difference between 20 years experience and 2 years experience 10 times....
OTOH, teaching doesn't change that much year to year. Once a teacher really knows the topic, and teaches it effectively, the only thing that changes is the quality of the student.....
 
UtahBill said:
Entirely on merit? How will you get good teachers to work in the bad schools?
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An unintended consequence of such measures could be that. As you say, it begs the question, what is the impact of the individual versus groups of individuals? It is entirely possible groups of individuals matter more than one teacher who is trying to do their job well. It would entirely depend on what one would use to judge "merit", but it is possible that the measurement of environment would unfairly judge the performance of teachers.
 
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