Paying Our Educators-- more controversial than you might think.

In today’s economy, every government agency is looking for innovative ways to shave a few bucks off of annual expenditures. Education is facing a particularly sharp razor is Mississippi were we can’t even adequately fund “adequate education” through MAEP. Many fear that budgetary shortfalls could translate into even more teacher layoffs in the K-12 community and inevitable tuition hikes for already struggling college students at public IHLs.

One new strategy for cutting costs that I’ve heard recently is practically infuriating. Economists are suggesting that we cut teacher pay incentives for procuring graduate degrees. Their argument is that higher degrees do not significantly contribute to overall teacher performance in the classroom, and pay increases for said degrees are therefore a superfluous expense. I can see how this would make sense to an economist sitting in a cubicle somewhere, far removed from the classroom and the reality that our schools are failing enough as it is without his two cents. But if he would just take a minute to listen to what he is suggesting, he would notice the hypocrisy of the idea. Cutting teacher pay raises for advanced degrees does not incentivize but actually discourages our educators from pursuing higher education.

The Department of Education and the White House do, however, seem to think that we should pay teachers based on their performance which they feel is most accurately gauged by student achievement on standardized tests. The DOE is handing out grants (even in Mississippi) to implement such programs. The program called New Direction, will implement merit-based pay structures in 8 Mississippi school districts. This all came about at exactly the same time that the Center for Performance Incentives out of Vanderbilt University released a report claiming that merit-based teacher pay systems made no significant difference in a controlled study and that there is “no evidence that being eligible for a bonus had a differential impact on teacher quality.”

While decision makers are on the right track with the idea of paying higher salaries for teachers, they aren’t quite there yet. Pay for performance would be like turning all the teachers into car dealers-- instead of scrambling for commissions, they would be scrambling for higher grades. If they really want to pay teachers more, they should pay every teacher more. My reasoning being that it just doesn’t make sense from a financial standpoint to become a teacher, especially in Mississippi. Sure, the retirement is good, but why would anyone in Mississippi want to settle for a $30,000 annual salary when the private business sector offers a plethora of other more lucrative career options. According to the NEA, the starting teacher salary in Mississippi is $30,090, with the average salary being $44,498. Teacher salaries are higher in Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Florida. We are literally losing our teachers across state lines.

Also, the educational system makes it difficult for students seeking a BA in a specific degree such as science or math or English to become a teacher. When I chose to become an English major, I was encouraged to do so by the department because they assured me that it would better for me to be specialized in the field in which I wanted to teach at the secondary level, which makes perfect sense. They also assured me that it would be easy for me to obtain my teaching certification. Well, easy is not exactly the way I would describe it, but it is doable. I just don’t understand why the state of Mississippi thinks an education major with a minor is English is more qualified than I am to teach 10^th grade literature. Give me a break. Part of the argument that economists and the DOE make in favor of cutting higher education pay raises is that most of the teachers who receive raises have a master's degree in education, rather than a specialized degree, but that is no excuse to cut the raises. If anything, we should require our high school teachers to seek master’s degrees in their specialized field and not just generalized education degrees. I was lucky enough to attend the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science (a residential public high school), where a majority of my professors had Ph.Ds. You cannot convince me that their expertise did not make a difference in the classroom, and I remember lamenting the fact that every Mississippi high school graduate was not as fortunate as me.

During a conference hosted by the business school here at Mississippi state last year, the CEO of The NorthFace company was giving a presentation on leadership (or something like that). But he made a passing comment that has stuck with me to this day. He argued that we should include a federal tax exemption clause for all school teachers. As extreme as this may seem, it sounded like a pretty good idea to me because it would impress upon the world just how highly we regard the educators who got us where we are today. Sadly enough, we just don’t seem to value education, or our educators, and this is starting to surface in international test score comparisons. For me, all these economists’ theories are just the last straw. Cutting salary bonuses for highly educated teachers is like saying “Yes, we will settle for mediocrity.”