As the United States emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, workers across the country are leaving their jobs at a record rate. Mid-career employees between the ages of 30 and 45 figure disproportionately in what has been dubbed the “big quit.”
The researchers say this is in response to stagnating wages amid increasingly heavy workloads and shifts in earning potential that follow the ebbs and flows of the U.S. labor market. But some careers, like teaching, have long existed outside the realm of the free market, despite their importance to a functioning society.
Research shows that teachers are hit with a “salary penalty” of about 20%, which means that, compared to someone with a similar degree, teachers only earn eighty cents on the dollar. This can lead to retention difficulties, but can also affect the quality of teachers in public schools. Not only do teachers earn less than other professionals, but in most school districts their pay increases are not tied to performance.
A few districts, including those in Washington, DC, and Dallas, have developed systems to measure teacher quality and encourage highly effective teaching practices. In these districts, the theory goes, the better you teach, the more you get paid. The strategy is based on what economists call the “efficiency wage theory,” which posits that increasing wages based on performance leads to increased output and decreased employee turnover, explains Emma García, senior researcher at the Learning Policy Institute.
According to García, teacher compensation affects student outcomes in three main ways. More people will consider teaching as a potential career path, they will continue to teach longer, and they will be motivated to improve their teaching.
“The most important thing about the teacher shortage is that it is not at all a new problem in American education,” says García, whose organization warns of such shortages. For years. “It’s been in the works for several years, it has only aggravated the existing problems.”
What makes a good teacher?
Dallas and DC are interesting test cases because they seek to reward teacher effectiveness in increasing student learning, says Shannon Holston, chief policy and program officer at the National Center for Teacher Quality.
What makes a good teacher is more open to debate, but Holston says it’s someone who can connect with students in a meaningful way, who can create engaging lessons based on standards, and help students grow. engage with this material. Rewarding these types of behaviors is a big departure from how teacher compensation is typically calculated.
“I think one of the challenges for the teaching profession is that with traditional salary grids, it doesn’t matter how much of a teacher you are, compared to the teacher in the next class, you will earn the same base amount. “, says Holston. “Or, you could be a fourth-grade teacher who, compared to a teacher with 15 years of experience, is much more effective, but earns $15,000 less.”
But defining and measuring teacher quality is incredibly complicated, as is making a direct link between teacher quality and student performance, García adds.
The Dallas Teacher Excellence Initiative measures teacher quality based on student outcomes, teacher performance, and student experience surveys. These three categories are weighted differently in recognition of the differences between different subjects and grade levels, but teacher performance always makes up at least half of the measure and student experience makes up the smallest proportion. Teacher performance is judged on a 19-point rubric that includes factors such as preparation, classroom culture and collaboration. Student performance is graded based on test scores and individual improvement.
Pre-pandemic data indicates that the district was able to retain more than 95% of its most capable teachers. These teachers also received larger salary increases than other teachers. Yet many of these high-performing teachers are clustered in already high-performing schools.
At DC, teacher quality is based on the teacher’s instructional practice. There, a rubric examines factors such as student achievement and educational culture. Student surveys and teacher contributions to the school community outside of the classroom are also weighted.
Teachers who end up being deemed “ineffective” are almost always fired, according to a city-commissioned study that looked at data from 2017-19. About 36% of teachers deemed “not very effective” (about 3% of all teachers) are fired, and 16% leave on their own.
DC Public Schools have been using their “IMPACT plus” model for over a decade. Since 2009, DC teachers have been eligible for annual bonuses of up to $25,000 if they achieve “highly effective” ratings on their teacher evaluations. That means a highly effective DCPS teacher can earn $1 million in bonuses over a 40-year career. This led to a 93 percent retention rate among the district’s high-performing teachers and a 94 percent retention rate among the top-performing teachers in the district’s poorest schools, according to the district.
Still, the appraisal system has been criticized by teachers and administrators as subjective and contributing to a culture of fear in schools, according to the city study, which also found white teachers were receiving high scores. ratings higher than their black and Hispanic peers.
A model for the future?
When DC first implemented the IMPACT system, “it was hugely controversial,” says Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education who has studied DC’s model since its inception. When the program was first used in 2009, it was not considered “politically credible”.
“Just having a truly consequential teacher performance appraisal system is really unusual in American public education,” Dee said. “But also, when we got to take a closer look at it, I was really surprised by its sophistication.”
When most people think of measuring teacher quality, they probably think of test scores. But expert groups, including the Economic Policy Institute, have warned against placing too much weight on test scores when evaluating teachers. DC’s IMPACT model “focused critically on something that teachers actually control, which is the character of their daily classroom practice,” Dee explains.
“We found that the teacher incentives created by the program didn’t really start to change teacher retention and performance until after the summer of 2011, when the first group of teachers who were ‘minimally effective’ two times in a row were fired, because then it was clear that the impact would be lasting,” says Dee.
The reasons why more districts are not following DC’s lead are both political and logistical. Designing and implementing such a system can be a challenge. Perhaps the biggest obstacles to overcome are political, caused by local elected officials, administrators and teachers’ unions.
“IMPACT is really compelling evidence of what teacher performance appraisal can accomplish in American public schools,” says Dee. “But I suspect it’s a point of proof that won’t be replicated at all because of the logistical and political hurdles of putting something like this in place.”
Much like in other industries, the COVID-19 pandemic may have a long-term impact on teachers’ salaries, Holston says, adding that additional funding provided in response to the pandemic is used for retention bonuses. States across the country are also revising state budgets to include teacher salary increases.
“I think the teaching profession has had challenges and shortages,” she says. “The tight labor market has caused states and districts to rethink some of their structures, including compensation, and we think that’s a good thing.”
“By really considering compensation and compensation strategies, districts can attract and retain the kinds of people we want to attract into the teaching profession.”
