Research Presentation Project Does a teachers salary have an effect on their performance?

Name: Ashton Crabtree Instructor: M. Campbell Class: English 1102 Date: March 4 2014

Source: Individual teaching incentives and student performance

Education reform advocates in the United States frequently argue that other than the intrinsic rewards of teaching, there is no incentive for teachers to do a good job (Figlio). Most public school teachers are paid on a salary scale where salaries are determined by a teachers educational attainment and experience (Figlio). Should we pay teachers based on experience and educational attainment or the number of students that pass? Teacher incentives elicit more effort from teachers, resulting in higher test scores (Figlio). An example of a teacher incentive is merit pay. On the other hand, merit programs that offer merit pay to a small fraction of teachers likely provide teachers with a stronger incentive to do well (Figlio).

Source: Why our best teachers are worth $150,000

We need to pay truly excellent teachers truly excellent wages (Milburn). Teacher education specialists say the large number of low achievers entering teaching courses is a trend that has been worsening over the past 20 years (Milburn). If we do not pay teachers what they deserve now then we will not have people entering the teaching profession. This will lead to under qualified people teaching our children. Countries with the most rigorous entry requirements for teacher education courses, such as Finland, Taiwan and Singapore, also had the highest achieving school students in international testing schemes (Milburn). The more schooling teachers have the more likely their students are to excel and achieve more.

Source: Does performance related pay for teachers improve student performance? Some evidence from India
Teachers are a central factor in the learning process that takes place in schools, and teachers attitudes and effectiveness can vary depending on the incentives they face (Kingdom). When a teacher has no motivation or desire to teach the students will also have no desire to learn. We have found that private schools relate pay to teachers performance as measured by student achievement and that achievement is improved by increasing teachers pay. We considered two interpretations for this result. The first was that higher wages proxy for higher quality teachers, the second was that higher wages motivate higher teacher effort (Kingdom). It has been proven over and over that the more a teacher is paid the more motivation they have to do well. If we took the pay of private schools and applied it to public schools maybe public schools would see more student achievement.

Reflection of Sources
Both of the Scholarly Journals I used to get my evidence and support from conducted an experiment to prove that teacher salary effects student performance. The website I used gave us something great to think about. When schools require teachers to have a great deal of education student performance also increases. All three sources agree that if we want to have students succeed we need excellent teachers. To have excellent teachers we need teachers who want to teach and who feel they are being rewarded for their work. To make them feel rewarded for their hard work we need to offer them some sort of incentive or pay raise.

Additional Questions Raised

After doing more research on my topic I want to learn why we have not adopted ideas from Australia, India, and other countries. In both journals I used as my sources they give plenty of evidence to show that teacher salary and incentives does indeed play a big role in student success. What will happen in 20-30 years when teacher salary has not increased nor have more incentives been created? Will we have a teacher shortage? How will we make the teaching profession appeal to future teachers? If we let the teaching profession stay unappealing to new teachers, who will take their place when they decide to change professions? Will the people teaching our kids be people who are not qualified and do not have the skills they need?

Works Cited
Brooke, Pamela. Does Increasing Teacher Salaries Yield More Learning? www.womenadvance.org. Woman AdvaNCe. 7 July 2013. Web. 7 February 2014. Durand, Maria. Teachers Spend own Money for Supplies. www.abcnews.com. ABC News. 31 August 2013. Web 7 February 2014. Ferriter, Bill. Three Reasons North Carolinas New Plan for Paying Teachers is a Bad Idea. www.teachingquality.org. 21 October 2013. Web. 7 February 2014. Figlio, David N. Individual teacher incentives and student performance. Journal of Public Economics 91 (2007): 901-914. Print. Helms, Ann Doss. North Carolina Teacher Pay Stranded by Shifts in Education Laws. www.newsobserver.com. 17 August 2013. Web. 7 February 2014. Kingdom, Geeta Gandhi. Does performance related pay for teachers improve student performance? Some evidence from India. Economics of Education Review 26 (2007): 473-486. Print Milburn, Caroline. Why our best teachers are worth $150,000. Newsbank. 21 May 2012. Web. 10 March 2014.