Sadly, a change recommended by the Ohio House Education Committee in House Bill 343 that would have eliminated the minimum teacher-salary schedule from state law was removed by the Rules Committee before the legislation reached the full house. The law entrenches the archaic principle that teacher pay should be based on seniority and degrees earned, and most districts’ collective-bargaining agreements still conform to the traditional salary schedule. For instance, each district in Montgomery County, except for one, had a seniority and degrees-earned salary schedule.[1]
There are several good reasons to do away with the traditional salary schedule. These reasons include: (1) It wrongly assumes that longevity is related to productivity; (2) it falsely assumes that a masters’ degree correlates to productivity; (3) it does not reward teachers who are demonstrably more effective; and (4) it does not differentiate teacher pay based on the conditions of the wider labor market.
Given Ohio policymakers’ reticence to ditch the salary schedule, it’s worth discussing again (see here and here for prior commentary) why the rigid salary schedule shackles schools. In particular, I’d like to deal with the fourth reason mentioned above.
Most will agree that some teachers possess specialized knowledge that may be more valued in the external labor market (i.e., in non-teaching occupations). Consider Miss Jones, a high school math teacher: It is plausible that she could compete for a well-paying job at, say, Battelle. Assuming her school wants to retain her, it might have to pay her more than the typical teacher. But an inflexible salary schedule would constrain the school from paying more to keep Miss Jones in the classroom.
A similar thing could happen on the front-end of the hiring process. Consider Mr. Smith, a recent chemistry graduate who is weighing a science teaching position versus a job with a pharmaceutical firm. If the school was fully constrained by a rigid salary schedule, it could not adjust its salary offer to compete with the other offer.
Meanwhile, a new study published in Education Finance and Policy by Kristine West suggests that high school teachers, more broadly, should receive higher salaries than their primary school counterparts. The study found that, on average, high school teachers are significantly underpaid by approximately 7 to 14 percent compared to similar workers in other occupations. However, elementary and middle school teachers are estimated to be either slightly overpaid or comparably paid relative to their peers in other professions. (The study calculated wage rates that accounted for over-/under-reporting of hours worked across professions and teachers’ summer work hours.)
West makes the policy-relevant point:
I take this as evidence that policy makers should consider abandoning the single salary schedule that forces districts to pay all teachers the same regardless of the grade and subject they teach….[I]t is likely that schools face a surplus of elementary school teachers and a shortage of high-quality secondary school teachers. Raising secondary school teacher wages could help alleviate this problem.
In sum, schools need a human resources strategy that recognizes differences in teachers’ economic value relative to the external labor market. When this aspect of compensation is ignored—as happens under the step-and-lane salary schedule—schools, and especially high schools, may lose out on a certain pool of workers. Abandoning the antiquated salary schedule at the state level would free districts from the seniority and degrees-earned teacher pay mandate. Instead, policymakers should free districts, allowing them to design a human resources strategy that meets their local needs.
[1] Districts receiving federal funds under the Race to the Top program are required to adopt an alternative teacher-pay schedule, partly based on teacher-evaluation results. Oddly, however, it does not appear that some RTTT districts are, in practice, adopting a performance-based compensation system. The author speculates that it is possible that as the federal grant program expires (and districts no longer receive RTTT funds), they are no longer required to conform to this alternative teacher-pay system.
