NYC charter school will offer teachers $125,000 salary
(posted by Paige)
I read this in today’s New York Times, and all I can say is it’s about time! Finally someone is willing to take a risk to see what happens when we treat teachers as though they actually have one of the most important (and challenging) jobs in this country. A new charter school is set to open in New York City and what makes it different is the salary it will offer in order to attract top notch teachers:
The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay teachers $125,000, plus a potential bonus based on schoolwide performance. That is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, roughly two and a half times the national average teacher salary and higher than the base salary of all but the most senior teachers in the most generous districts nationwide.
No doubt there will be glitches to work out, and fine points to address, but it’s worth a try.
March 7th, 2008 at 11:17 am
So, if it works, we’ll see all sorts of “school reform” types supporting six-figure salaries in the public schools, right? You know, because the benefits of competition come from the emulation of success, right?
Right?
March 7th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Hmmm…I’m not sure I catch your drift, but my guess is you’re being sarcastic? Maybe you’re thinking wages this high are unsustainable in public schools. Maybe you’re right. But, at the moment teachers are paid disgracefully little, and the ones that are really good are sacrificing other, higher paying opportunities in order to make a difference. Doesn’t it make sense that higher wages will attract more highly qualified teachers?
March 7th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
Public school teachers work nine months of the year. They get paid rather decently in many areas of the nation.
In NYC, however, half of 125K per year would be only so-so. But do cops there get paid much better?
A lot of private school teachers — certainly parochial ones — earn less than their public school counterparts. Let the parents choose.
March 7th, 2008 at 10:52 pm
School’s are holding centers for children. I do not celebrate when the public employees in them get more money, unless it’s by cutting the administrative staff.
March 8th, 2008 at 9:54 am
Actually,I believe that part of the deal with the higher salaries is that the teachers will shoulder more of the administrative work, and they will work a longer school year. I can imagine that the experiment will progress in a way that eventually the higher wages will find a sustainable balance. Either way, imagine having rocking teachers become the norm in public schools. Oh, and about letting the parents choose…I’m pretty sure that sending kids to charter schools is a parental choice to begin with.
March 8th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
It will be nice if the increased responsibility for administrative work carries some actual authority for self-management, rather than senior administrators simply downsizing the middle management ranks and dumping the tasks on production workers. Also nice if the measurement of “performance” reflects goals worked out by the teachers and parents themselves, rather than by some combination of the professional administrative establishment and dreck like No Child Left Behind. Ideally, the school would be a stakeholder cooperative with management entirely responsible to some combination of teachers and parents.
March 8th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Paige — agreed. I defend voucher systems, but have no quarrel at all with charter schools as another option. Indeed, I live in one of the few states whose Constitution would have to be amended to permit vouchers for parochial schools, given that — as the federal Constitution does not — this state’s contains unambiguous language that would not permit state-funded vouchers to be used for parochial school tuition.
But we have a nascent charter program.