Teacher Salaries, Administrator Salaries

Once again, let me start by digressing.
Many years ago, some for-profit companies realized they were losing great engineers.  Where were the engineers going?  To the management track.  Why?  They needed to earn better salaries and the management track paid significantly more.  Some of these engineers became great managers and that was a benefit.  Some of them became mediocre or poor managers.  In the meantime, the company lost the talent of some excellent engineers.  Some of the great engineers truly wanted to stay in engineering but could not afford it.  Eventually many companies adjusted.  They made sure that great engineers could earn a competitive salary on the engineering track.  Great engineers did not have to become managers to increase their pay.

You can probably see the next paragraph coming …

At some point, many great teachers decide to become administrators to increase their pay.  Schools need talented administrators; so if a great teacher becomes a great administrator, well, that is valued and needed.  However, great teachers are in short supply.  If a great teacher wants to continue teaching and stay in the classroom, the gains in the salary schedule come slowly and then top out.  The world of education needs to come to grips with this challenge and find a way to pay and retain great teachers in the classroom.  Great teachers should not have to become administrators to increase their pay significantly.

By the way, why would anyone want to be a principal today?
It pays more, but consider the challenges.  Principals have tremendous responsibility for student outcomes.  They can hire teachers when there are openings, but it is almost impossible to release under performing tenured teachers when it becomes clear that the problem teacher is not improving or sustaining the improvement.  (Yes, we need due process, but it has to end at some reasonable point.)

If the restrictions on salary schedules and tenure were removed, principals would have the opportunity to pay deserving teachers more and motivate the rest.  In my opinion, that time has come.

We need to give administrators the tools they need to motivate improvement.  This is an important mandate for a school board, but one that is difficult to implement.  The union contract seriously restricts the types of options that are commonly available in other fields.

Would a charter district face these same limitations?  That would depend on the type of charter.   Is a charter district a possibility for La Cañada Unified?  That needs research.

Communities and school boards need to put the kids first.  We should not be a permanent employment agency for tenured teachers.  Great teachers and competent teachers will have jobs, with or without tenure.  These great teachers make a tremendous difference in the education and future for our children!

If you are talking to incumbents school board candidates, ask them if they are in favor of structural reform.  If they say yes, ask them why they haven’t voted for customer satisfaction surveys?  What took them so long to vote for teacher evaluation data?  Can they point to open session votes that show us that they are interested in systematic data collection and reform?