A New York City charter school set to open in 2009 in Washington Heights will test one of the most fundamental questions in education: Whether significantly higher pay for teachers is the key to improving schools.
The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay teachers $125,000, plus a potential bonus based on schoolwide performance. That is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, roughly two and a half times the national average teacher salary and higher than the base salary of all but the most senior teachers in the most generous districts nationwide.
Here is the story, thanks to Kurt Muehmel for the pointer. For many years I’ve been telling some of my Ph.d. students that they should consider teaching in private high schools. None of them seem to listen but maybe this will have some impact.
I don’t see how this would solve very much. Presumably, this school would have its pick of teachers in the NY metro area, practically guaranteeing that they can find the best (assuming they have some way of distinguishing quality). This won’t tell us anything, however, about the potential effects of across-the-board pay increases — are you drawing in higher quality people or simply paying the same underperformers more?
This seems a rather roundabout way of addressing the problem. Mightn’t it be simpler to offer significantly higher pay to the students? Since they’re currently working gratis, and (enterprising black marketeers excepted) seldom get more than the minimum wage on the job market, the chance of any kind of (shock horror) remuneration for (shock horror) schoolwork might be expected to act as a significant incentive.
You’ve forgotten the hyperlink, Tyler.
There’s also a good piece in the Times magazine today, a round table Q&A with some philanthropists and prominent administrators in education. The Times asks what they would do for schools with a 2 billion dollar gift.
It’s interesting to compare the ideas of the Chancellor of NYC public schools, Klein, with those of Steve Barr, a charter school founder.
Klein seems to think targeting districts is more important than teachers or students:
I would look for the most promising individuals and make heavy investments in them. Let’s say you choose Michelle Rhee, the new schools chancellor in D.C. That school system has long been one of the worst-performing in the country, and Michelle wants to really overhaul it. I think our philanthropist could make an eight-year bet on her. It’s the same kind of thing I would have wanted to have happen to us when we started six years ago in New York. To start, I’d give her a couple of million to do some planning.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/magazine/09roundtable-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin
And Ms. DeWitte, I enjoyed your novel, especially the first chapter.
Does not scale.
The partial equilibrium effect: Massive flow of highly qualified professionals and teachers to high paying schools.
The general equilibrium effect: ???
What happens when more than one school embarks on this plan is much more difficult to predict. Permanently higher quality of teachers, and attraction of talented individuals into the field? A bankrupting of the school system? A further divide between rich and poor districts in the quality of schooling, and a final crushing blow to the health of the public school system in underprivileged districts? Danger, Will Rogers!
I don’t see why we should pay all teachers more. It’s really the math and science teachers that are harder to find, which is not surprising. People who understand math and science have more outside options than people who study the humanities do.
Given time, higher pay will draw in a higher quality teacher pool- this is simple economics. The novel thing about this particular proposal is that it reallocates resources from the bureaucratic support and the technology (computers, for example), and redirects it towards higher salaries. Teacher unions are not going to like this system, however, since it will weed out poor teachers, and if such teachers become unionized, the benefit that arises from the weeding process will be lost, and higher salaries will not fix it. I call this institutional rot. I think avoiding this rot will be Mr. Vanderhoek’s real challenge, should he lead the school longer than the four years he has promised.
There are two problems with the way we run education in this country, in my opinion. The biggest problem is the students and their parents/guardians. I don’t see a systemic way to fix this within the education system- these are deep cultural problems. The other big issue I see is the high level of overhead in the education system. This arises from teachers’ desire to be promoted out of teaching- to be promoted up into the bureaucracy where the job is less taxing and higher paying. Every public and private education system I have seen seems to be structured this way- except, now, for the proposed one. Paying the teachers more and making the job of teaching the primary and premier job within the schools may have a lot of merit. I think Mr. Vanderhoek is onto something.
Student of economics: STUDENT quality, not teacher quality, is the number one determinant of educational outcome. As far as teacher quality goes, outcomes behave like an S-curve relative to quality. There is a continuum of bad teachers. A good teacher (near the top of the S-curve) is effective. A great teacher is only marginally more effective than a good one. Once your teachers are adequate, you hit the point of diminishing returns very quickly.
(The hypothesized reason for this is the following. Each student has some “innate potential”. A bad teacher will not help them reach this potential. A good teacher will come close (say 90%). A great teacher may reach 95% or 99%, but never higher than 100%.)
Also, are you accounting for the opportunity cost of skilled workers elsewhere in the economy?
Mathgeek:
1. You may be right about good vs. great teachers. In any event, my suggestion of $60K/yr is probably aimed more at shifting the quality from bad to good, than all the way to great (except for those great teachers willing to work for a lot less than they could probably make elsewhere).
2. You are right about the opportunity cost of skilled workers elsewhere. It’s my subjective assessment that shifting someone from being say, a lawyer or marketing manager, to being a teacher would be a net plus for the economy. It’s less clear for engineers (like jason), but my guess is that teaching has more positive externalities than most professions.
Chris Blattman’s concern about inequality across school districts suggest that any such plan should be implemented nationally (or at least statewide) rather than by individual districts (although experiments are always welcome).
I would agree that the extra pay would be wasted if it didn’t lead to a change in teacher quality. Hence, it would be important to measure outcomes carefully and be aggressive about selection when hiring rather than just hiring the same people as before. I suspect most school districts and principals do prefer good to bad teachers, and would have the right incentives on the margin, as long as they were relatively free to make these decisions. This is especially true if educational outcomes are measured and well-publicized.
If school wasn’t a government monopoly, I wouldn’t know or care how much the teachers were paid & I wouldn’t have to.
In every other facet of my life where I depend on people to meet my needs, their salaries are completely a private matter between them & their employees. If they aren’t providing satisfactory service, then they work it out. I have never held a meeting with my neighbors to discuss whether we should change the pay structure at the local Century 21 office in order to make a satisfactory realty market. The idea would be absurd.
To the extent that we’re even having this conversation, I think we’re not seeing the forest for the trees here.
I’ll watch this, just like I watch every other alternative approach to education, and hope that it adds something to the discussion. As an engineering manager, and trustee of a private school, I’m skeptical … it really doesn’t seem at all novel. Highly paid engineers (or other technical professionals) rarely have what it takes to be good (much less exceptinal) teachers, and great teachers (although typically underpaid) don’t do it for the money. Teaching, just like managing, engineering, or even sports, is a skill set and to the extent that they are able to attract a greater % of the most skilled, they’ll out perform other institutions with less talent.
Assuming competent teachers, student quality and parental involvement seem to be the biggest drivers of performance; couple that with the fact that this doesn’t scale except over the long-term as it brings wins greater numbers of high-potential people away from other professions.
The school will see significantly “better” results from its students in terms of standardized test scores and grades if the program attracts better students.
The number one factor in determining how well a school or classroom performs is the intelligence and innate aptitude for acquiring knowledge of its students. You cannot socially engineer intelligence, regardless of how much we would like to believe otherwise.
Student quality and family engagement are of course huge factors, but they’re not the only factors. Most teachers don’t have good economic incentives to do a good job, honestly. Saying that increasing pay won’t help because most teachers you know aren’t doing it for the pay is just using a self-selected sample. There are probably a good number of people out there who would be good teachers but are not doing it partially for lack of pay. Bureaucracy, the difficulty of the job, and so on are of course additional factors.
The thing that interests me the most about this debate is the analogy with CEO pay. If you believe that paying teachers more is valuable, does that give you pause about the argument for paying CEO’s enormous amounts because of the scarce talent pool? Likewise, if you believe that current CEO pay is justified (compared with historical figures, current pay is often much more than 3X), why shouldn’t higher teacher pay be justified?
Tyler: As somebody starting my Economics grad work in the fall, I have considered just what you were saying… then took a couple of secondary education classes and thought otherwise. Maybe I just had a bad batch of students (I was teaching in a poorer part of Kalamazoo), but it was a very trying experience on my nerves, to say nothing of the constant feeling that I was talking way over their heads. Maybe a private school would be different, though, and it would be something I should consider after getting my Ph.D.
Isn’t this assuming teachers are underpaid in the first place? $40,000 plus European-style health benefits and vacation time is good pay for somebody with a bachelor’s degree in English or history.
“Isn’t this assuming teachers are underpaid in the first place? $40,000 plus European-style health benefits and vacation time is good pay for somebody with a bachelor’s degree in English or history.”
I guess some people disagree, likely for a wide variety of reasons.
And, since they all get paid the same thanks to the union, public schools can’t really do much in terms of sweetening the pot for people who can teach in fields where the teaching pool isn’t quite so deep…
I’m sure the union wouldn’t like this kind of change, but is this the kind of thing a union has to oppose, fundamentally? If you get a masters degree, you get paid more as a high school teacher. Why not a similar boost for math or science competency?
This seems a rather roundabout way of addressing the problem. Mightn’t it be simpler to offer significantly higher pay to the students? Since they’re currently working gratis, and (enterprising black marketeers excepted) seldom get more than the minimum wage on the job market, the chance of any kind of (shock horror) remuneration for (shock horror) schoolwork might be expected to act as a significant incentive.
New York is doing that as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/05/nyregion/05incentive.html?scp=1&sq=Next+Question%3A+Can+Students+Be+Paid+to+Excel%3F&st=nyt
First of all, this would even tempt a person like me in need of a job once I graduate from college. Importantly, though, I think that this could work or fail miserably – the outcome depends more on what resources they plan on giving the teachers more than how much they are going to pay them. Will the teachers get the materials and equipment they need from the school or will they have to pay for it out of pocket? In North Carolina, our teachers are not paid a good deal but on top of that in poorer school districts (such as my own, for example) teachers must buy the materials they want if they plan on doing more hands on learning. Many teachers, especially in elementary school also take the initiative to buy extra supplies for children who are disadvantaged and do not have the money to buy their own notebooks, pencils, and colored pencils needed to succeed.
I think that the funds going to pay these high salaries could go to better use to create better schools elsewhere. Give teachers the money they need to buy materials, put computers in classrooms, buy new textbooks that are actually in date (I had a high school textbook that contained a map showing Czechoslovakia, for instance, and I graduated in 2005).
Giving teachers higher salaries is a start, but $125,000? I feel for teachers, but knowing a few current and future teachers, I think that they would support bringing better supplies and materials to classrooms before giving twice the average NYC salary. Build better schools and classrooms and then you will have better teachers, that is my opinion.
Overall, the basic plan of this school sounds like a good one – increasing salaries to attract better teachers and, significantly, funding that increase by cutting down on (bureaucratic) administrative expenses. However, teachers are not the only determinants of performance, as many above have noted. The individual students and their families (particularly the value the student’s family places on education and, correspondingly, teaches the child to place on education) are key factors that really must be addressed on the private, family level. But an inability to control that factor in school success does not necessarily mean an inability to influence. One way this can be done is by providing local communities more control over the teachers in their schools – such as power to quickly and easily fire any teachers who are underperforming based on objective standards (test scores, etc). Also, making the connection between education (the service) and its costs more direct and visible would likely help. In addition to dispelling the myth that public schools are “free,” directly transferring money from individuals to schools will encourage greater parent involvement. After all, when someone realizes that he is in fact paying for his children’s (“free” public school) teachers, he is more likely to make sure that he is pleased with those teachers. One way (the best, perhaps) to make this link is obviously with private schools. But any system of taxation where the money is visibly traceable from the taxpayers to the schools (and the teachers, administrators, etc) will encourage greater parental participation and oversight. Added to a system with increased salaries, stricter hiring requirements, and fewer school administrators, it would go along way towards improving the quality of schools.
Unfortunately, schools and teacher unions are not likely to welcome the shift. School administrators would dislike the increased accountability (their lives are easier without parent involvement, generally) and fewer administrative positions would mean fewer administrators. Teacher unions represent a lot of bad teachers that have a lot of job security under the present system. The teachers, one would assume, would tend to promote their interests above those of the students when there is a conflict.
The conclusion I reach is that the system is greatly flawed, and an effective solution will address the problems cohesively. But that is unlikely to happen, and attracting higher-quality teachers with better salaries (and retaining/rewarding high-performing teachers with bonuses and salary increases) is a good thing.
Watcher’s comments strike a chord with me. We’re currently in the middle of a crisis with pretty dire implications- students from other nations who have so chronically outperformed American students are now working and studying, and our country is dropping away from the cutting edge.
I sort of wonder what it will be like to finally live in the backwater nation, for once, rather than the top-of-the-mountain America I’m used to (anecdotally, people I’ve met from other countries would LOVE to come to United States- someday not too many decades away, we may all perhaps be wishing we lived in China or Japan!)
Part of the point with this and other studies is that our current system is not working- it is tragically broken. Not just an unhappy sort of broken, but broken such that this single problem could turn our country into tomorrow’s struggling nation. I wish I could find some study or cite some sort of evidence powerful enough to convince anyone who read this that the current system of education in this country is so bad that it ought to be a higher urgency to fixing it than any other issue, including war and famine- and also that teacher salary is the single most important- and controllable- element in education. This issue will bring us to our knees, just because the next generation will be, metaphorically, that much shorter.
Maybe that will be what I write my next paper on here at my University.
I must applaud this move, even if I find it an altogether odd implementation of the whole idea. We need more experimentation, even if it ought to be somewhat more systematic than this.
they have high enough salary
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