Kids
learn more and good teachers don't quit, of course! A NYC charter
school (TEP) tried it out and saw impressive improvements. After the
4-year pilot, TEP students' test scores were about +1.6 years ahead of
peers in math, and +0.4 years ahead in English. And this was not a posh
suburban academy, it was an >90% low-income and minority school.
Granted
it was just 1 case, but the results were promising enough that I hope
others will try to replicate and scale it up. The school got no
additional funding, so the learning gains were basically free. It was
able to pay teachers six-figs because they increased avg. class size
from 27 to 31, and ran leaner without as many wasteful administrators
(middle managers). Everyone employed at that school did both teaching
work and leadership/admin stuff, which probably made them feel more
empowered and autonomous (key drivers of job satisfaction). Poor performers did not get the high salary for long; contracts were not renewed for about 1/3 of teachers, and fresh talent was brought in. This motivated teachers to give high effort and maximize their skills/career development. In other words, the ones that could... they earned their pay. And students benefited in the process. Obviously this was only possible at a non-union charter school. Such a program may not "fix" bad inner-city teachers, but at least it has a better chance to retain the good ones (teacher turnover is abysmal in high-needs schools for obvious reasons), and provide motivation for those in between. If we want professional performance, it's not a huge stretch to start treating teachers like professionals. This is especially impactful in high-cost-of-living areas like NYC.
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