• Sen. Michael Bennet: Bring Teachers’ Pay Into This Century

  Nothing makes a bigger difference for student learning than great teaching. To get enough of the teachers we need, teaching has to be a great job where talented people are supported and rewarded.

  tags: teachers teacher compensation teacher evaluation educational reform

  • Nothing makes a bigger difference for student learning than great teaching. To get enough of the teachers we need, teaching has to be a great job where talented people are supported and rewarded.
  • When talented women had to choose between becoming teachers or nurses, we could convince them to teach “Julius Caesar” for 30 years with a small salary that built toward a generous pension in retirement.
  • We urgently need a new system — one that provides competitive salaries from the start, and opportunity for growth, attracting talented people entering the workforce to the profession.

  • Teacher compensation isn’t the only factor in cultivating great teaching. Other important priorities include changing how we measure student performance, providing more flexibility to teacher-preparation programs, and improving how we train and support principals.

      

    Yet with a million teachers set to retire nationwide in the next few years, an inadequate system to recruit and retain new teachers, and schools that are struggling to meet high expectations, we can no longer afford to continue a 20th-century system in a 21st-century world. It is time we reform our compensation structure to allow us to recruit from a strong pool of talent and to prevent us from losing our most successful newcomers to other jobs.

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