Fixing the broken ladder

The teaching profession is broken. In no other career are you expected to work for peanuts upon graduation and work 15 years before your salary reaches $40,000.

Research shows that, compared to the average teacher, an effective teacher can provide an extra half year of growth in student learning per year, but we do a terrible job of recruiting the best and brightest to the field.

The problem is particularly apparent in our great state: North Carolina has fallen to 46th in teacher pay. Luckily, the climate is ripe for intelligent reform within budget.

Currently we reward teachers for one thing only: seniority. Excellent and terrible third-year teachers are paid the same. Worse, if a great teacher wants to move up the career ladder, they must leave the classroom and cease serving the students that so desperately need them.

These incentives are all wrong. First, we have to recognize that the base salary of $30,800 for a newly graduated teacher is not going to attract the best to the classroom. Pay is not increased until after year 5, but a teacher does the majority of their improvement in their first 5 years of teaching.

The teacher salary schedule in N.C. drastically needs a makeover and should start by increasing base pay by at least three percent. We believe that these four principles, as advocated by the

CarolinaCan campaign, are essential to N.C.’s education system:

1. The way we reward teachers should be aligned with an overall vision for the teaching profession. If we want good teachers, we need to create a system that encourages them to actually teach, rather than rewarding them for moving out of the classroom.

2. Teachers should be rewarded for factors, like student growth and evaluations, which are associated with classroom effectiveness and not solely based on seniority.

3. The salary schedule should be responsive to the realities of district funding. Certain districts have the ability to supplement teacher pay considerably, and this short-changes kids in lower-income areas where teachers are paid up to $7,000 less.

4. The salary schedule has to be sustainable within regular per-pupil budgets by reallocating how we pay our teachers and focusing on rewarding what works for kids.

Teaching reform is crucial, and it affects us all. Many students of this University will graduate and go into education, with the goal of improving the lives of the young kids who will decide our future.

Whether you have young siblings right now or will have kids in the future, they all need good teachers.

Teachers and students alike deserve better than the current system. We both have younger siblings in public schools, and they deserve to be taught by someone who actually wants to be there, and will be rewarded for enriching their lives.

These reforms benefit teachers and students alike, and they can be done within budget. The legislature has no reason not to make propose and pass them next session.