The first question we should ask when making education policy is how does the policy impact the educational outcome for children.  When it comes to teacher compensation, we should ask how paying all teachers the same impacts student achievement.

This recent Indianapolis Star editorial argues that we should change the way we pay teachers. We now have a system the basically pays all teachers the same, regardless of educational outcomes. The payoff for the adults seems to be the security and benefits of a union protected job. The benefits for the kids?  Not sure.

Every time there are budget constraints the call comes out that teachers are going to lose jobs. Taxpayers are now aware that the first on the chopping block are newer teachers at the expense of protecting teachers who have been around longer, regardless of other factors.

Forgetting for a moment that you might lose some of your best and most enthusiastic teachers, who might have some fresh ideas on how to educate kids, does it seem fair that the only measure that determines whether or not you lose your job is how long you have had your job?

Wouldn’t our students be better off if they had access to the best teachers, regardless of how long someone has been teaching? And wouldn’t a system that rewarded the best teachers more than the average teacher lead to better educational outcomes for students?

Simply paying teachers more is not going to solve every problem in our education system.  And certainly all stakeholders in education -from administrators, teachers, parents and students – need to understand what is expected of them and be held accountable to fulfill their part of the deal.  But that said, what is the harm in rewarding our best teachers differently than teachers who do an average job?