Mustafic 1

Ermina Mustafic
P. 3B English 1010
Ms. E. Parrish
May. 7, 2015
Teacher Salaries Reflect Student Scores?
A post by Valerie Strauss on the Washington Post shocked me. According to
Strauss, the USA average for a teachers salary is $56,383 which is a lot less than many
other professions. For having such a crucial role in our students lives, educators are not
getting paid what they should. Teachers are the educators of our nations future leaders
and deserve to have better pay.
For decades the United States has been trying to get our students test scores up.
One thing that people have ignored to consider is raising teacher salary. The U.S.
education system has been lacking compared to other nations. The Level Playing Field
Institute did some research on how the U.S. compares to other countries in STEM
Education. They found that according to the World Economic Forum, the United States
[ranks] 52nd in the quality of mathematics and science education.
In an article by Jessca Leber on Co.Exist; Leber introduces a charter school in
Manhattan that is trying out higher pay to their teachers. The Equity Project as it is
known, pays their educators $125,000 a year. With big pay has come big pay off. In her
article, Leber posted a WSJ report saying:
After four years at the charter school, eighth-graders showed average test
score gains in math equal to an additional year and a half of school,

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compared with district students. The study found these charter students
gains equaled more than an extra half-year in science and almost an extra
half-year in English.
It is clear that raising teacher salary helped out this school in raising student scores.
However, I am not saying that just because the project showed various benefits that it will
work for every school. But I am certain that as a nation we want to see our students
strive and improve as our country grows older. If we see that an experiment significantly
improved one schools test scores, why should we not try it all across our nation?
We have been trying to find ways to improve our education for decades and have
been ignoring a solution many experts would agree would help. Raising teacher salary
all across America would help out drastically with our education problem. Higher pay
means higher requirements. Many people would agree that a teachers pay should be one
of the higher paying jobs. After all, most teachers have a masters degree and put many
extra hours into their jobs. However, despite all of this, people find reasons to fight the
truth about raising teacher salary.
Some people may argue that with raising the salary of teachers, that it would also
raise the stress levels for both students and educators. In Lebers article on Co.Exist she
explained that with the Equity Project came some challenges. Of the 43 teachers who
made it through the schools rigorous interview process and were hired during the study,
47% only lasted one year, whereas the nearby district school only had a 27% turnover
rate. However, this result should not come as a surprise to people. All drastic changes
require some exertion before they reach their peak. Teachers would have to go through

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many evaluations to show that they meet all the requirements that would come with
higher pay. That is why the project showed results, unqualified or unmotivated teachers
were filtered out, which left more space for better more qualified teachers.
Another problem that I have considered and that people may be worried about is
the worry that teachers will lose a passion for teaching and many will just do it for the
pay. Teaching is not a job that people go into for the pay. They choose to go into it
because they love kids and believe they would be a great mentor. So, if we raise the
salary will it bring in people who are solely motivated by money? No, it will not. There
are many other jobs that have higher pay and would require less requirements than being
a teacher. If someone does not have the passion to teach there is no reason for them to go
into teaching. Raising teacher salary would only bring in even better teachers.
We measure the quality of something by the price of it. When buying a new
appliance for your kitchen buying the cheapest one is not the way to go. We all know it
will eventually not work correctly, require money for fixing problems, and break down.
These would all have been avoided if the more expensive appliance was purchased first.
Peter Temin who is a widely cited economist and economic historian (Wikipedia) and
currently a professor at MIT, makes a good point relating low pay to low quality teachers
in his article, Low Pay, Low Quality. Temin believes if we were to pay our teachers
more we would get a better education system and also avoid other problems. Temin
makes his point saying, I argue that the market for teaching has failedin the sense that
we are paying low salaries for low-quality teachers when we would prefer high-quality
teachers. It would only make sense to raise teacher salary.

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Teachers are definitely being underpaid, a graph in Temins article showed just how much
lower teacher salaries are than other professions that require a college degree.

Figure one shown on

the left shows a
comparison between
females who went into
teaching or a different
career with college
degrees. There is a very
big gap between the two
when it comes to the
salary each profession is
Figure 1

paid. Teachers on
average earn 10% less

than opposing jobs with the same amount of education. It is unfair, problematic, and
requires more attention than it has got over the years.
If you still believe teacher salary is not the problem to our failing education
system, explain to me why the countries that rank higher than us in education have higher
teacher salaries. An article on the Huffington Post, Teacher Pay: U.S. Ranks 22nd Out
Of 27 Countries, by Jack Jennings showed just how low teachers are valued in the U.S.
According to Jennings the United States are the 22nd lowest teacher paying country out of

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the 27 countries that were in the study. Im sure your average, everyday American
wouldnt believe that we fall that far behind other countries.
Another reason we fall far behind other countries in education is because we dont
set high requirements for people looking to go into teaching. Teacher Quality: What's
Wrong with U.S. Strategy? an article by Marc Tucker, compared U.S. teacher quality,
with those of other countries. Countries that have higher student achievement also have
tougher and more rigorous requirements to get into teacher education institutions. In fact,
according to Tucker, only 1 in 10 applicants in Finland makes it into the teacher
education institution. Compare that to what Tucker found on U.S. applicants, The most
recent data from the College Board show that college applicants planning to go to schools
of education scored in the bottom one-third on their SATs. The U.S has simply fallen
behind in student achievement and teacher quality. We need to require more teacher
evaluations to be able to filter out the average from the best of the best. If we have better
educated people teaching our nations children, we will see an increase in student scores
and national achievement. However, with raising requirements for teachers, we will also
have to raise salary.
Raising teacher salary is a solution that everyone needs to see as a benefactor.
With raising teacher salary we would improve teacher quality and together it would all
benefit our nation as a whole. There are reasons that people can disagree on about raising
teacher pay. However, one thing no American can argue, is that we want to be number
one in everything we do, especially education! We all want to see our nation strive and

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prosper; the key to all of this is and always will be education. If our students our taught
well we will grow as a nation.
A solution has been found to fix many of our nations problems. I hope you
believe now if you didnt before, that teachers are the heart of our nation and raising their
pay would benefit us all.

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Works Cited
Ferraz, Claudio; Bruns, Barbara. Paying Teachers to Perform: The Impact of Bonus Pay
in Pernambuco, Brazil Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness. 2012
http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED530173
Feistnitzer, C. Emily. What Is the Role Of Teacher Education? Education Week. 23
February 2011, Vol. 30 Issue 21. http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?
sid=5b1c1553-85d6-4364-aa72601a77bf9576%40sessionmgr112&vid=10&hid=128&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3
QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=f6h&AN=58699740
Jennings, Jack. Teacher Pay: U.S. Ranks 22nd out of 27 Countries Huffington Post 30
August 2011 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jack-jennings/teacher-pay-us-ranks22nd_b_940814.html
Lago, Adeena. What makes a good teacher? Personal Interview. 13 April 2015
Leber, Jessica. Here's What Happens When A School Pays Its Teachers A Lot, Lot More
Money Co.Exist 10/31/14 http://www.fastcoexist.com/3037843/heres-whathappens-when-a-school-pays-its-teachers-a-lot-lot-more-money
Mark. The U.S. Ranks 14th in Education Ranking America 6 January 2015
https://rankingamerica.wordpress.com/category/education/
Marsh, Sarah. How the Job of a Teacher Compares Around the World The Guardian
5 September 2014 http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacherblog/2014/sep/05/how-the-job-of-a-teacher-compares-around-the-world

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National Council on Teacher Quality. Teacher Quality Roadmap: Improving Policies and
Practices in the Miami-Dade County Public Schools National Council on
Teacher Quality. 2012 http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED528797
New Teacher Project. The Case Against Quality-Blind Teacher Layoffs: Why Layoff
Policies That Ignore Teacher Quality Need to End Now New Teacher Project.
2011 http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED518138
Richwine, Jason. Why We Shouldnt Raise Teacher Pay The Federalist 25 July 2014
http://thefederalist.com/2014/07/25/why-we-shouldnt-raise-teacher-pay/
Strauss, Valerie. How Much Teachers Get PaidState by State The Washington Post
15 December 2013 http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answersheet/wp/2013/12/15/how-much-teachers-get-paid-state-by-state/
Temin, Peter. Low Pay, Low Quality Education Next Summer 2003 Vol. 3 NO. 3
http://educationnext.org/low-pay-low-quality/
Tucker, Marc. Teacher Quality: Whats Wrong With U.S. Strategy? Educational
Leadership 1 December 2011 http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?
vid=6&sid=5195a4fc-507c-4c77-b39de344d62aa81b
%40sessionmgr113&hid=128&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d
%3d#db=f6h&AN=67664425
Wallis, Claudia; Healy, Rita; Hylton, Hilary; Klarreich, Kathie. How to Make Great
Teachers http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?sid=5195a4fc-507c4c77-b39d-

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%40sessionmgr113&vid=12&hid=128&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ
%3d%3d#db=f6h&AN=29988669