BY ILANA GRATCH

The way it currently stands, teachers are paid based on only two things: how long they have been teaching at a school and which degrees in education they have. But often times, in fact,  the best teacher is not the one who has been at school the longest, and is not necessarily the one with the Ph.D.

Everyone has witnessed this phenomenon. There are teachers everywhere who have tenure, have held a steady job for a while, and yet are not considered the most desirable to have. So is it fair that this teacher be paid more than an extremely innovative and well-liked first year teacher, simply because they’ve been at the school longer?a

Teacher pay based solely on seniority does not only inaccurately reward the teachers’ abilities, but also limits the motivation of teachers who have been teaching for a long time. They have no reason to create new and exciting lesson plans or methods of teaching as long as their paychecks are increasing regardless.

While many teachers will continue to come up with innovative ideas for however long they teach, others simply do not, and this unfair system should be reconsidered. However, there is no simple solution to this dilemma.

One way to measure a teacher’s effectiveness is through standardized testing, a method which risks “teaching to the test.” Another possible route is basing a teacher’s success on student and parent input; however, this could be subjective. Evaluation on a few random days throughout the year by an administrative member is an option as well, but a few classes are not an accurate representation of the entire school year. 

No system alone is perfect, including the current one, and so, there is no one-way approach. Rather, the way to solve the problem at hand is to implement a combination of these methods.

Teacher pay should be based on a few components. We should not completely rule out the current system, for it does hold some value. Therefore, the new system should consist of how long a teacher has been teaching, the degrees they have, standardized test scores, personal improvement of a student, parent and student complaints and praises, and finally an evaluation by an administrative member.

While this may not be the easiest way to handle the situation, teachers should be paid based on their job performance in order to insure that the highest quality teachers are filling our schools.