Dr. Marc Gaswirth, a retired public school administrator, has written extensively for nearly 50 years about public sector bargaining  and school human resources.  

In New Jersey, two variables–years of service or experience and academic credentials–determine how much a traditional public schools teacher gets paid annually. Significantly, neither one, especially the latter, correlates with whether job effectiveness improves.

Yet it’s a fiction long-perpetuated by teacher unions and enthusiastically endorsed by many school employees who are paid thousands more each year for accumulating extra graduate credits or additional degrees without having to demonstrate through the evaluation process that they are doing better work. (See, for example, “Schools Spend Millions on Master’s Degree Premiums That Don’t Improve Teaching, New Analysis Finds.”) 

Institutions of higher education promote this practice not because they are able to confirm a link between academic achievement and job effectiveness. They encourage it because it produces a major revenue stream.

Teachers’ salaries appear on a grid known as a salary guide that can be found on many school district websites. It is a convenient way to display a teacher’s pay increases during the length of a labor agreement.  

In addition to moving usually one step on the guide during each contract year, teachers may earn additional compensation by moving across the guide after accumulating additional academic credits or degrees.

Assisting them in this effort is often a district-sponsored tuition reimbursement plan. 

Once teachers apply for reimbursement, approval is liberally granted provided the courses have some relevance to the individual’s current area of responsibility or to another position in the district. When a course is satisfactorily completed, professional staff members are repaid for at least a portion of the tuition cost based on the terms of the negotiated agreement. 

Staff members may choose from an array of in-person or online graduate-level courses offered by regionally-accredited colleges and universities. 

These classes frequently have a pedagogical focus sometimes leading to a graduate degree in education. Others focus on state-mandated classes needed to obtain credentials that enable professional staff members to take on new positions such as counseling, supervision, and administration. A few courses concentrate on content-level matter specific to the teacher’s current area of specialization. 

A district’s investment in a tuition reimbursement program offers teachers the opportunity not only to prepare for future employment in the field but also allows them to secure ongoing salary adjustments in their current positions. 

Employees who move on to better paying positions in other districts might want to thank their previous employers for this financial support.

Among the essential questions that should be asked before course approval is granted, the following are important:

–Should (and importantly, will) the district expect the teacher’s quality of work to improve after taking these courses?

–Can this improvement be assessed through the evaluation process or in some other way? 

–Will completing certain courses help teachers obtain additional endorsements or certificates that give the district greater staffing flexibility?

–Is the coursework rigorous, focused, and substantive? Does it have a clear and direct relevance to the teacher’s current area of responsibility? 

Local school districts pay annually tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in salary differentials for no provable net gain in student outcomes. Rather than being a worthwhile and reasonable expenditure of public resources, it appears nothing more than an easy and uncomplicated way to increase teachers’ pay without asking any further accountability from them. 

Let’s also not also forget the enormous financial impact these salary differentials play when factored into pension payments that the state is obligated to pay over extended retirement periods.
 

While we know that an overwhelmingly majority of tenured teachers meet annual performance standards, judging teacher effectiveness writ large still remains an elusive concept  especially when linked to a teacher’s length of service or acquiring advanced academic credentials. 

There are serious structural flaws in the teacher compensation model, especially paying salaries formulaically unrelated to a job’s essential nature, scarcity, or relative difficulty to perform under special conditions that may be present in a workplace. 

Those dissatisfied with this model–courageous local union members among them–should raise their voices and register their concerns that there are other alternatives of acknowledging exceptional performance. The financial rewards for those efforts should not have to await the passage of time or the accumulation of graduate credits.