Teacher Pay and Performance

There is an Anonymous comment on Problems with Merit from a North Judson reader that mentions that she (or he) was a finalist for last year’s Lily [sic] scholarship. She points out that the winners were hard working and deserving. That certainly needed to be said. So, thanks, Anonymous. Her school pride in North Judson’s performance is quite indicative of the attitude at North Judson that gives them such an advantage over Knox. Anonymous says, “I am from North Judson and we made up 5 of the 10 finalists from the county, not to mention our other winner from Judson in Pulaski County! Go Jays!” WOW. North Judson had 2 winners. I must say that they are getting nice results for their brightest students.

This begs the two questions, what is wrong with Knox and what is right with North Judson? I think that North Judson has made a concerted effort to nurture its brightest students. Their Academic Bowl program is high intensity with dedicated teacher and student efforts. I think North Judson makes an effort where Knox doesn’t. There are many opportunities at Knox to put together high impact programs in the sciences, arts and letters. However, these opportunities are not pursued.

I would like to tell “what if” story. What if a veteran teacher from North Judson applied for a job at Knox. This teacher is interested in pursuing a new classroom opportunity that is available in Knox. It so happens that this same teacher is a driving force on the North Judson Academic Bowl team. Even if this was the most qualified candidate, and even though it would be well understood that this would be a great opportunity to improve our top-end academic performance, this teacher would not be hired. Why not? Because this teacher would be a veteran instructor and would have to be paid at the top of the scale. We don’t hire veteran instructors if we can avoid it. So that is one problem with Knox. If Knox really cared about this sort of thing we would be recruiting and hiring teachers with proven skills.

This brings up another comment from Lemuel's Mother made in response to Treating Teachers like Crap. The comment was about teacher pay. It is a widely held, rather common conservative viewpoint that paying teachers more money is either pointless or wasteful. I think it is evident that our school board holds closely to this viewpoint and the community, in large, agrees. The argument goes something like this: “Teachers have been getting pay increases and the student results haven’t been getting any better. Ergo, increased pay for teachers is a waste.” Underlying this argument is another widely held view that teachers really don’t do anything especially difficult. Hence, the claim, teachers could be replaced by housewives and nobody would notice a difference. If there is any truth to the above argument it is only because the administration makes it true. If the administration and school board does their job correctly, we do not have weak teachers. They are either not hired or are fired.

Adequate pay means that we are paying enough to attract and retain good teachers. When the school board lies and cheats in pay negotiations Knox ends up paying teachers less. (Treating Teachers like Crap). I suppose some in our community will cheer. That sort of overly cute behavior means that the best teachers will find employment elsewhere. We will be left with those teachers that can’t find employment elsewhere. The result will be a continuing decline in our school’s quality. Sad.