Solution #3: Increase
Incentives and Paths
to Success
8
Percentage of students enrolled in schools with
more than 20 percent of teachers not yet certified
7
6
5
There’s a debate about how
much money matters in
attracting and retaining the
best teachers and
administrators. The federal
government has stepped in
with a variety of programs,
including the Teacher
Incentive Fund (TIF), to help
draw teachers to the most
struggling schools and
communities. New York
City’s new teacher contract
allots $5000 more to
teachers who go to hard
to staff schools. Qualified
teachers can apply to take
on additional duties, and get
$7,500 more if selected as a
model teacher or teacher am- – let alone the disparities that
exist between poorer and
bassador, or $20,000 more
more affluent districts. She
to be a master teacher.
and Paul Hill have explained
how averaging teacher
Teaching children from
salaries within districts
wealthy backgrounds in a
disguises the often huge
posh setting is greatly
discrepancies between the
different from wading into a
most and least affluent –
school dominated by
and most and least white –
children who live in
schools.
concentrated poverty.
Marguerite Roza, head of the
So what’s Roza’s formula to
Edunomics Lab at
ensure that effective teaching
Georgetown University,
thinks it’s a profound injustice is fairly distributed, and that
that school districts often pay no child falls behind?
teachers more at prospering
One proposal she and Hill
schools than the struggling
ones within their own borders made about 10 years ago
–It’s a profound injustice that school districts
often pay teachers more at prospering schools
than the struggling ones within their own
borders, let alone the disparities that exist
between poorer and more affluent districts.
18
4
3
2
1
0
Asian
Black/African
American
Latino
Two or more races
White
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Civil Rights Data Collection, 2011–12. From the U.S. Department of
Education Office for Civil Rights, Civil Rights Data Collection, Data Snapshot: Teacher Equity Issue Brief No. 4 (March 2014).
was to build school budgets
based on student numbers,
rather than staff numbers, so
that expenditures would be
directly comparable, without
regard to discrepant staff pay.
As it was phased in, the more
advantaged schools with a
disproportionate amount of
salary money wouldn’t be
able to afford their mix of
teachers. Over the course of
time and through attrition,
those more affluent schools
might need to seek less
expensive, newer teachers
or use fewer staff overall to
maintain their higher salaries.
Their savings would then be
redirected to other district
schools with higher needs.
But despite initial agreement,
that idea foundered.
Another suggestion Roza
offers is to let principals in
challenged schools
determine how to reward
their best teachers so as to
keep them. She cites the
example of a principal who
decided to give the educators
he considered most capable
more money for each
a