RALEIGH – In a recent column, I extolled the virtues of decentralization in many but not all government services, arguing that it encouraged healthy competition and experimentation. An excellent area to apply decentralization would be in the compensation of public-school teachers.
Almost no one is explicitly in favor of paying all teachers the same amount, adjusted for longevity. Even teacher-union reps usually say they favor additional compensation for teachers who take on difficult assignments or extracurricular tasks. For the rest of us, the notion of differentiated pay extends far beyond the additive. It makes sense that teachers who specialize in high-demand fields such as math, science, or special-needs instruction should be paid more than the average. It also makes sense for teachers who achieve exceptional results should be paid more than those who achieve average results, and the latter group in turn should be paid more than those who achieve only minimum-level results. Finally, many of us believe that teachers who work in schools highly demanded by parents, as evidenced by enrollment trends and waiting lists, should share in some of the financial proceeds that such success must bring.
But when the issue of merit pay gets specific, it gets complicated. For example, these three potential justifications for differentiated pay – hard-to-fill slots, demonstrated performance, and in-demand schools – may be seen as in tension. Perhaps one reason a particular teaching position is hard to fill is that its outcome might be particularly challenging to measure, or because it is at a school with a bad reputation among parents. More generally, there are disagreements about how best to filter out non-classroom effects on student performance – entrance and exit tests sound like a pristine solution, for example, but it’s reasonable to expect that disadvantaged students wouldn’t just start a school year below their classmates, but might also fail to make as much progress throughout the year for reasons unrelated to teacher quality.
To say that rewarding teachers for excellent performance is a challenge is not to say that it is an impossibility. Indeed, I think it is a necessity. Teacher unions and their allies constantly insist that the teaching profession is not treated the same as other professions, which is true, but that is partly because the teaching profession is different from those professions in fundamental ways. The vast majority of doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, and other professionals work in competitive, private-sector settings (though in the case of, say, medical professionals, they may well be competing to attract taxpayer-subsidized business). They are evaluated either by the use of measured outcomes, customer satisfaction, or some combination of the two – often combined under and added to a process of subjective performance reviews by their managers.
Teacher unions typically oppose individual merit pay based on test-score gains. They also oppose most choice programs that might subject their members to competition to satisfy clients. And they oppose giving principals more authority to hire, fire, reward, and manage their employees. Still, they complain about a lack of respect for teaching as a profession. Round and round it goes.
There is no shortage of potential solutions to the teacher-compensation conundrum. There are schools, school systems, and education reformers of various stripes arguing for their vision of how to measure excellence or need and how to attract the best teachers to where they are most needed. Of the eight most-influential education studies of the past decade, as computed from citations and survey data, three involved ways to identify and measure teacher quality. There are many merit-pay experiments already underway in jurisdictions across the country.
If North Carolina policymakers want to lead on teacher compensation, they should abolish statewide regulations that dictate how local schools can hire, fire, and pay their teaching professionals. After several years under such a system, education officials would know a lot more about how to do it – and how not to do it.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.