Should Teacher Salaries Stay in Step?
As we hurtle toward the end of the summer amid a continued standoff between the Philadelphia School District’s administration (along with Governor Corbett, the Pennsylvania legislature, and to a lesser extent Mayor Nutter) and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (of which I am a member), I’d like to to try to discuss some of the work rules and contract provisions that are causing so much friction. In these blog posts I am speaking solely for myself. So even if I say a certain provision is absolutely essential, or something I’d be willing to negotiate about, I have no real authority to implement my opinion. But this is the thought process that every member of the union, and indeed every resident of the city, is going to have to go through to some extent or another, so I figure it is worth it to put it out here for others to read and discuss.
One proposal by the district, which is supported by certain conservative reform groups, is to eliminate “step raises,†the pay scale in which teachers receive an increase in salary every year from the second to the eleventh year that they work for the district. The argument that these advocates make is that the district should have the power to reward the teachers who do well and not be forced to reward those who are not doing so well. “Pay teachers for how well they do,†the argument goes, “not how long they have worked.â€
There are actually at least two separate issues here. One is the “merit pay†question of whether teacher salaries should be tied to some kind of performance metric. The second is how to establish a base teacher pay scale. On the merit pay issue, there are several obstacles that need to be overcome before such a system would make sense. One, frankly, is the issue of trust between the teachers who are being evaluated and the administrators who are doing the evaluation. If there is a chance that the administrators might play favorites, that is going to be a problem. If a teacher is worried about voicing a disagreement with a principal because it could affect an evaluation that can affect his or her paycheck, that poses a problem. You might be able to create a system of due process in which the evaluations could be appealed, or validated by an external source, or something similar. But then you have to ask yourself, is the time and money devoted to that process worth it? Will whatever performance gains you expect to come from this merit system be the best use of the resources you devote to implementing it?
Another issue is how exactly you will establish performance. Usually standardized tests such as Pennsylvania’s Keystone exams are a large part of the equation. Quite frankly I think this is a terrible idea. We already have too many incentives in the system pushing to increase test scores even though there are many reasons to believe that standardized tests are a poor way to evaluate what a student really understands. Standardized tests don’t really assess deeper critical thinking skills. Standardized tests often tend to rely on background knowledge that is possessed by members of some demographic groups but not others, making the tests discriminatory. Standardized tests feed into the test prep industry, so that families who can pay for test prep can boost their children’s scores but not necessarily boost what they understand.
And so much of what teachers do does not show up directly on a standardized test. I am a social studies teacher, so right now there is no standardized test in my subject in Pennsylvania. So when it comes to my school’s test results, I am expected to contribute to our students’ results in reading and literacy based exams, which right now is the English 2 Keystone. (We’ll talk about the fact that Pennsylvania apparently wants to create standardized-test-based accountability but hasn’t funded the creation of any of the tests beyond 9th grader math and 10th grade English and science another time.) Now, I happen to place a lot of emphasis on vocabulary, critical reading, and writing skills as they are essential for understanding history. But how can anyone tell how much of an impact I have had on my students’ reading and writing ability in comparison with their English teacher? Up until last year, I taught World History to every single Parkway Center City 9th grader. Last year I taught 2/3 of the 9th graders. This year it might turn out to be somewhere closer to half. So at best, you might be able to compare the way that my World History 9th graders do on the English 2 Keystone in 10th grade to the way that the other World History teacher’s students do on the same test. And that’s how you’re supposed to tell which one of us is doing a good job?
Even if there were a standardized test in World History, I do not believe that my students’ performance on that test would be sufficient to judge whether or not I am doing a good job as a teacher. I have been the adviser for Parkway Center City’s student government for the least four years. I have helped students organize fundraising drives, develop proposals for school improvement, and create programs to increase school spirit and student engagement. If you ask me to prove that I am a good teacher, I am going to point to those things along with my students’ academic performance. But you rarely hear about such things from the merit pay boosters.
OK, so let’s put aside the merit pay question. What’s the justification for the step raises? Here’s what I think is the proper way to look at it. Teaching is a field that, like many, requires experience to do well. I had been a college teacher for ten years before I started as a high school teacher. I studied education theory in order to get my Ph.D. and then studied more in order to get my M.Ed. and get certified. But there is a lot about the job that you can only really understand by doing the job. That means that, in essence, the school district has to pay me while I get my on the job training. I think it makes sense to pay me less than the experienced teachers in the same school who have already learned those lessons and, in fact, are helping to pass them along to me. That’s the principle behind step raises – not that every teacher gets automatic raises just for staying on the job, but that teachers gradually reach the full salary for their position through years of experience.
It’s important to note here that the step raises do not last throughout a teacher’s career – a teacher with fifteen years of experience makes the same salary as a teacher with twenty-five years. Once you reach what’s considered the full salary for a qualified teacher, you’re no longer getting paid for those incremental gains. Your salary only goes up based on the negotiations between the union and the district. So, just to repeat, many teachers are not getting paid more “just for sticking around another year.†To eliminate step raises, you have to justify that a rookie teacher should be paid the same as someone with a decade of experience. And then you have to figure out where to set that initial salary. A starting teacher with a bachelor’s degree makes $45,360. A teacher starting his or her eleventh year in the district makes $67,705. If you bring the initial salary up to the experienced teacher’s base, now you’re spending a lot more money. If you bring the experienced teacher down to the starting teacher’s base, you will create a huge gap between what an experienced teacher can earn in Philadelphia versus another district. So how would you retain experienced teachers? In many cases, you wouldn’t.
Finally, you may think that it’s unfair to assume that any teacher who stays in the district for ten years has improved and is a good teacher. Well, there’s an answer to that: get rid of bad teachers before they reach that point, and raise the bar for what makes a good teacher based on the teacher’s experience. There is a procedure spelled out in the Pennsylvania Public School Code for removing a teacher because of incompetence and a host of other reasons. There is a due process system spelled out in the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers contract through which a principal can establish said incompetence, and through which a teacher can try to defend himself or herself. So if a teacher is genuinely doing a bad job, and a principal thinks that there is probably a better person available for the job, then that principal can gather the evidence, complete the evaluations, and go through the proper channels to remove that teacher.
Now, maybe there are some changes that should be made to that process. Maybe principals currently don’t have the time or resources to properly document what “everybody knows.†Maybe there are some other flaws that I do not see because fortunately I have never gone through the disciplinary process. But that’s not an argument to scrap the system and come up with some other system that punishes all of the effective teachers. That’s an argument to build up the trust and cooperation between all the players in the district so that these systems can be improved through a process of good faith negotiation. And that’s exactly the opposite of what we have now.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.