Categories: Need to know

Paying excellent teachers what they’re worth

New York charter schools to pay $125,000 salaries

by macleans.ca on Friday, June 5, 2009 12:18pm - 1 Comment

Chronically underpaid teachers will be paying close attention to the outcome of a significant educational experiment that gets underway at a New York charter school this fall. The idea: recruit top-notch teachers and compensate them accordingly. A dream team of eight teachers, including an accomplished violinist, Kobe Byant’s former trainer and several with Ivy League degrees, will be paid US$125,000—two and a half times as much as the national average. Class sizes will be bigger, hours will be longer, and they will have to sacrifice some retirement benefits. As well, they can be fired at will. The school, called The Equity Project, will choose students by lottery, with priority given to low-academic performers and those from low-income neighbourhoods.

The New York Times

Tags: education

Phil Walsh

Sounds like an interesting idea but just creating this type of situation is like saying that the problem in U.S. schools is that teachers aren't paid enough. Pay them more and the results will be much different, seems to be the suggestion. It completely ignores the fact that education research says home environment is the main factor in determining a students' success in school. The rich send their kids to private schools, the poor send their kids to public schools, which the right-wing don't want to support with any more tax dollars than they have to. There's no way people will support paying teachers $125,000. If people really want better results from schools and they want them to be able to overcome the socio-economic factors in the home it's going to take a lot more than just some high-paid teachers.