We ought to flatten the pay curve more than we already have.
-John hood, November 14, 2024
If the former leader of the John Locke Foundation and a current board member of the JLF is anything when it comes to his perspectives on teacher pay it is that he is consistent. The mouthpiece for Art Pope’s legislative machine and libertarian think tanks recently wrote another version of the same educational pay plan that he has been spewing for almost a decade alternating between asking for reforms in how teachers are paid and calling for more reforms by introducing ideas that he has already touted.
And in all of that time as he has praised the lack of graduate degree pay, merit pay, bonuses based on value-added measures, and “advanced roles,” what has happened to the teaching profession in North Carolina?
Fewer career teachers, more vacancies, higher attrition levels, and fewer teacher candidates in our education preparation programs. In a state that at one time in the last 15 years had a teacher surplus, we now have this:
Here is the link to Hood’s latest regurgitation.
And please be patient as other versions of this “reform” model are shown throughout the years that Mark Johnson and Catherine Truitt have been at DPI and that Phil Berger and Tim Moore have been puppeteering at NCGA.
From May, 2016:
“But that’s not how the current leadership in Raleigh has been approaching the issue. They’ve junked forms of compensation that didn’t produce better instruction, such as the foolish practice of paying teachers to get largely irrelevant graduate degrees, while focusing legislative attention on starting salaries and pay raises for teachers in their early careers, which is when most improvement in teacher effectiveness occurs.
“There will be more raises and bonuses for experienced teachers as part of this year’s package, which is understandable. Still, policymakers seem inclined to continue reforming the way teachers are compensated, including differentiation by demonstrable need and pilot programs for performance pay. Given the petty politics and irresponsible rhetoric employed by their left-wing critics, this qualifies as courageous leadership deserving of conservative support….
“…Instead of chasing headlines or poorly measured statistical goals, McCrory and legislative leaders are boosting and reforming teacher compensation in order to attract and retain high-performing educators to some of the most essential and challenging jobs in the public sector. As long as policymakers maintain overall fiscal discipline, by spending less in other areas on the budget, their strategy consists of applying basic conservative principles to what most voters consider to be a high priority.
“Makes sense to me.”
That “foolish practice” paying for graduate degrees. Performance pay. Praise for what McCrory has done to help teachers.
Mmmmm.
From August, 2016:
“While I believe performance pay is necessary in public education — as in most other professions and fields — I think these pilots may help North Carolina policymakers explore some related questions that have yet to be answered conclusively. Here’s the key one: Is performance pay about incentivizing or identifying?
“One possible use of performance pay is to encourage teachers to improve their effectiveness, either by working harder or worker smarter. Perhaps the promise of financial rewards will lead to higher levels of sustained effort, or to teachers acquiring new skills, through continuing education or emulation of peers, that translate into better instruction of their students.
“Another way performance pay might be useful, however, is simply to identify the best teachers, retain them in the profession for longer periods of time, and perhaps give them additional compensation to take on more duties (such as mentoring teachers) or more challenging assignments (such as teaching disadvantaged children).
Performance pay. Advanced roles. Oh, and remember that EVAAS thing was starting to kick in.
Mmmmm.
From October, 2017:
My own view is that, while no one has yet produced “the” optimal plan for paying teachers, Horn and Stoops are right about its likely contents. Teachers ought to be able to progress in their profession, and make more money, by becoming lead teachers, by filling hard-to-staff jobs, by delivering sustained high performance in student growth, and by working in teams (within grades, perhaps, rather than entire schools) to produce better-than-average student growth.
Structuring pay around years of experience and degrees awarded was a bad idea. I’m glad North Carolina is moving away from it. Now, let’s talk more about where it ought to go.
More about getting rid of that graduate degree pay thing.
Mmmm.
From March, 2019:
“In a rare and praiseworthy occurrence of evidence-based policymaking, the North Carolina General Assembly decided several years ago to end the state’s pay supplements for graduate degrees. Lawmakers decided instead to reform the teacher-salary schedule so that pay rose with gains in teaching effectiveness, which occur disproportionately in the early years of a teaching career, while also offering bonuses for exceptional performance.
“In addition, an increasing number of North Carolina school districts are pursuing the flexibility to adopt new compensation systems that pay teachers more for assuming advanced teaching roles. We may also see greater differentiation as teachers get paid more based on hard-to-staff subjects and hard-to-staff schools, although political resistance to such common-sense practices — which are common in other professions — remains significant.”
Abolished graduate degree pay and advanced roles.
Wow. Original.
Now look at the rise of vouchers and the more charter schools in North Carolina.
From October, 2019:
“Rather than chasing ephemeral headlines and dubious rankings, North Carolina and other states should focus on changing how we pay teachers. We need to differentiate salaries by subject, by school, and by performance. I’ll grant that there are no easy answers here, either, especially when it comes to employing performance measures that teachers, supervisors, policymakers, and parents will accept with confidence. But surely the answer cannot be to throw up our hands and say the task is impossible.
“No other professionals are paid the way teacher unions say their members want to be paid. It speaks volumes that in our state, the North Carolina Association of Educators has made it a high priority that the legislature restore pay supplements for teachers who obtain graduate degrees. “The fact that teachers with master’s degrees are no more effective in the classroom, on average, than their colleagues without advanced degrees is one of the most consistent findings in education research,” says Matthew Chingos of the Urban Institute.”
More about differentiated pay! No more graduate degree pay! And a jibe at NCAE. How Hood of John Hood.
From August, 2021:
“Now, is the general public right to assume that teacher quality can be directly measured, by value-added test scores or supervisors or some combination? If so, we need not use roundabout means (years on the jobs or degrees earned) to identify and reward high performance. We can use performance-based pay to increase average teacher quality in at least three ways, by 1) incentivizing teachers to perform at their highest capacity, 2) encouraging high-performing teachers to stay in the profession, and 3) nudging low-performing teachers to exit the profession.
“My guess is that the second and third mechanisms are more important than the first. You probably don’t care about my guesswork, however. Is there any hard evidence for merit pay?
“Yes. Independent researchers have studied these questions for decades. Some answers remain tentative and hard to interpret. Other results are more immediately useful. In general, they find that merit pay improves teacher quality, although it depends on the specific program studied and the specific variables assessed.”
Every thing he said about merit pay there did not in any way help the teaching profession – especially in light of the pandemic that teachers were having to navigate.
Oh, and more vouchers being financed as well as more teachers leaving.
From April, 2023:
“As the school-reform group BEST NC points out in a new report, North Carolina’s average teacher pay in 2021 was close to the middle among Southeastern states but our average starting pay of $39,625 was next to last on the list. By comparison, Tennessee paid its entry-level teachers an average of $43,106 — even though the two states don’t differ much in overall compensation. Our current system makes teachers wait too long for their pay to reach a competitive level. Indeed, state government already has a more front-loaded pay schedule for such careers as law enforcement, corrections, and court administration.
“I hope the Senate opts for a smaller across-the-board adjustment and a far larger bump in starting salaries. I also hope the final agreement does more to differentiate teacher pay according to location, subject matter, and job responsibilities.”
Seven years strong on that differentiated pay thing. And the plug for BEST NC’s plan. Know who serves on BEST NC’s Board? Yep, Art Pope.
And NC is still hemorrhaging teachers.
And from November, 2024:
“Teacher compensation is, obviously, a fiscal question. The General Assembly has enacted raises in recent years and needs to do more. But it isn’t only a fiscal question. As the education-reform group BEST NC put it in a recent report, the problem “is not just about how much teachers are paid, but also how that pay is structured.”
“I’ve already spotlighted one flaw in North Carolina’s approach: we set starting salaries comparatively low and then gradually raise them through annual steps. As a result, we’re making early-career teachers wait too long to get to a reasonable level of compensation. We ought to flatten the pay curve more than we already have….
“… What most academic research on the subject demonstrates, and what the BEST NC report recommends, is that pay in North Carolina ought to be much more differentiated. Those who teach hard-to-staff subjects such as science and advanced math should be paid significantly more than other teachers, as should those who teach in hard-to-staff schools with rates of student disadvantage, those who take on greater responsibilities such as training other teachers, and those whose evaluations show consistently high performance.”
Same BS. Same results.
Hood’s argument on not honoring graduate degree pay increases, EVAAS value-added measures, advanced roles, and merit is simply just a exercise in WASH – RINSE – REPEAT. And it is calculated because with the money that his benefactor Art Pope spends to trumpet this narrative, NC has seen more teachers leave, fewer staying in the profession, more privatization of education with taxpayer dollars, and a deliberate snubbing of the LEANDRO decision.
John Hood doesn’t just want to flatten the “pay” curve for teachers. He wants to flatten public education under the weight of neglect.
