Wake County school board members have voted to use local funds to give pay raises of $200 to $350 to 1,600 teachers. The News & Observer story says the amount of the raise is determined by length of employment.
If Wake wants to prioritize spending this way, that’s fine with me. The problem I have is in giving raises based on how many times someone has walked through the doors. Clearly, this approach rewards both good and bad teachers – exactly what Wake County students don’t need and what we say we don’t want. One would think everyone could agree this is a disincentive to good teachers and an incentive to bad ones. After all, how many times have you heard a teacher complain that their colleague across the hall doesn’t do nearly as good a job with the students and is paid the same money? House Minority Leader Paul Stam sums up the problem this way:
“The basic, general problem is that we pay on longevity and credentials rather than productivity and energy,” Stam said. “We would do much better to have a merit system on differential pay rather than strictly on longevity and credentials.”
