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Health & Fitness

Would paying teachers a higher salary produce better results in schools?

There is a long-time national debate over teacher pay, state education budget cuts, and taking away benefits packages, tenures, and pensions.  States across the nation are facing massive budget crunches and extracting money from the education sector. However, would teachers willingly give up those added benefits for a chance to earn a higher competitive salary? And would this produce a higher quality education for our youth?

There is a new experiment going on in a bold school in NYC called The Equity Project Charter school, also known as TEP.  It’s a publicly funded school that is privately run, and offers it’s teachers a starting salary of $125,000 a year. That more than doubles and triples most teacher salaries across the nation. But does it produce academic results?

The school’s model is based on the same method as most successful organizations. If I pay a higher competitive salary, I will attract the top qualified candidates in this field.  The catch is that the teachers are not only held accountable for the results of their students’ improvement, but also are in an “at-will” work environment, and can be fired at any time for non-performance. The idea is about attracting and retaining talent.

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The qualities that the Principal, Zeke Vanderhoek, looks for in his teachers is to produce evidence that they were able to improve students’ academics from one point to the next. The teacher has the ability to engage their students in learning.  With a higher salary also comes higher expectations. The teacher must create and design effective lessons for their particular class of students, and if it’s not producing desired results, they must change and improve their lesson.  It’s forcing the teachers to review themselves and the way they teach. One teacher notes how it has highlighted certain gaps that she had in her own teaching abilities throughout the years. The downside, there aren’t state-of-the-art facilities in this inner city school, or reading and other specialists.

What do these inner city students think of the teachers at their new school? One student replied “They actually care if we succeed and get into college.” Most of the students remarked that they got more attention and more support from their teachers, especially in areas where they were struggling. Students also mention that the teachers push them harder to make the A’s and B’s and that is all the difference. The teachers are accountable, and thus holding their students accountable.  One must also take into account that the students coming into this school were well below academic performing standards. For example, 5th graders who couldn’t read or write, were able to jump 2 grade levels in reading in one year. That is major improvement that cannot be measured through comparing to peers in standardized testing.

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That is one way to bridge the gap in poor performance in some public schools. 

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