Teacher pay should be tied to performance, ability: study

Most of us have a favourite teacher.

Mine was Mrs. Wilson, my Grade 7 teacher. She was strict but knew how to engage her students and get them excited about learning.

I've also had my share of bad teachers — we all have. These are the lazy teachers who have been around forever, use lesson plans developed in the 1970s, and are clearly waiting out the clock to retirement.

In the 'real world'— not in the unionized world of the public school system — those types of employees wouldn't last long. They certainly wouldn't be getting raises.

Unfortunately, under our current system, teachers are rewarded based on seniority and credentials and not on performance. If we're going to improve our education system, that has to change.

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A new study, released this week, supports that thesis.

The report, published at the Canadian Council of Chief Executives' website, notes that in our public education system "[teacher] excellence goes unrewarded, mediocrity goes unaddressed"

"Human resource policies in our school systems are more often guided by historical tradition and bureaucratic expediency, rather than by a devotion to excellence and effectiveness," the report written by Sachin Maharaj, a high school teacher in Toronto, states.

"It offers no financial incentive for teachers to improve their performance in the classroom – to become more effective teachers. Pay is based solely on academic/professional qualifications and seniority, neither of which is a strong indicator of how well teachers actually teach. Beyond the first few years of teaching, when effectiveness does appear to increase, there is no obvious reason why teachers should receive automatic yearly pay increases – and why a lazy and ineffective teacher should be paid the same as a hardworking, dedicated and effective teacher.

"We should want much better than this for a profession as important as teaching."

And here's the kicker: Unmotivated teachers lead to bad report cards and lower levels of future income for our kids.

"The challenge for education policy is that the quality of teaching in our schools varies considerably," notes the study.

"The same landmark study...(Chetty, Friedman & Rockoff) found that students who were exposed to ineffective teachers earned $50,000 less over their lifetimes compared with students who were taught by average teachers.

"This translates into an economic loss of $1.2 million per class. Simply put, it is ruinous economic policy to allow ineffective teachers to teach our students."

The report does not recommend a pure merit pay system where a teacher's salary is tied to grades or other student outcomes. It does, however, suggest that a teacher's pay be tied to his/her performance measured by their dedication to continuing education, their teaching ability, student feedback and ongoing comprehensive performance evaluations.

It also proposes that teachers who don't meet objectives — the bad teachers — should be let go.

Now, isn't that a novel idea?

Maharaj's research echoes another report on teacher compensation published by the Fraser Institute last fall.

In that report, author Rodney Clifton proposes several other 'teacher-focused' measures to motivate bad teachers to do better. The measures include strict teacher college entrance exams, giving principals more authority to hire and fire teachers and a re-certification process whereby experienced teachers would be tested on their competencies and abilities before having their contracts renewed.

"The best performing 15 to 25 per cent of teachers are able to impart a year and a half’s worth of material to students in one academic year, while the bottom 15 to 25 per cent are only able to impart half a year of material to similar students," Clifton notes from his literature review.

"In other words, the best performing teachers are at least three times more effective than the worst performing teachers. This evidence suggests that excellent teachers can off-set the negative effects of many other [education] variables including the students’ socioeconomic status."

Such forward-thinking measures, however, are often rebuffed by teachers' unions across the country who have an unflinching affinity for the status-quo.

Bob Pratt, president of the Ontario Principals' Council, seems to suggest that the the idea of tying pay to performance is foolish.

"In my experience, teachers get their satisfaction from seeing kids succeed. I’m not sure that offering more money will necessarily motivate people," he told the Globe and Mail.

"In our view, financial incentives are the wrong tool in this culture."

Unfortunately, we all have had teachers who need some sort of incentive to perform better whether it's a carrot or a stick. Isn't that how things work in the 'real world'?

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The common refrain is that teachers deserve to be paid more. Some — like my Mrs. Wilson — probably do.

Some others don't even deserve to be in the profession. The scary thing is: some of these mediocre teachers are still getting raises and still teaching our kids.

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