By Jennifer Colletti
I am a bright, ambitious young professional. I am also a high school teacher. Contrary to popular belief, these two things are not mutually exclusive — at least not during the first few years of a teaching career. While earning my master’s degree from UNC’s education school, I scoffed at the oft-cited statistic that 50 percent of all new teachers change careers within three years. Now, upon entering my third year of teaching, I am at risk of becoming part of that statistic. The good news is that the solution to our nation’s education woes is actually quite clear: We need to start treating teaching like a profession and not just a means to an end.
In two recent opinion columns (“Who’s Minding the School?†on July 2 and “A Nation Still at Risk†on July 30), author Steve Peha rightly argued that the new focus of school reform must be on teacher and administrator quality and personal accountability. This doesn’t mean more bureaucratic hoops to jump through, but rather a change in the workplace culture of schools.
Before deciding to teach, I worked for several years as a writer and editor at a local newsletter publishing company and then at a local nonprofit organization. When I decided to get my master’s in teaching and become a high school teacher, I had no illusions about the job I was signing up for. I was prepared for low pay and long hours, and I hit the ground running as a teacher of English and journalism at East Chapel Hill High. However, I quickly learned the basic career-path components to which I had grown accustomed in my previous jobs — meaningful performance reviews, increased responsibilities and recognition — were hard to come by as a teacher.
Of course, I find reward in my students’ success and the relationships I build with them. But I started questioning my decision to teach when I realized that all my hard labor and success in the classroom would earn me nothing more than four cursory annual observations from administrators and the state-mandated $500 annual salary increase.
I realized that colleagues who joke about receiving “standard†classroom observation ratings will earn the same annual salary increase as a teacher with all “superior†ratings.
And I learned that classroom observations are just a chore over-worked administrators labor to complete; as long as teachers are doing “standard†work or better, there’s really no need to discuss their performance and certainly no additional opportunities to offer them. Ironically, the better you perform as a teacher, the less attention you receive.
Tenured teachers in good standing might only expect to see an administrator in their classroom once a year.
Finally, I realized that I — like so many young professionals of my generation —thrive on recognition, rewards and the promise of new challenges and privileges for a job well done. Today’s public school system offers none of these fundamental motivators to keep ambitious educators engaged. We talk until we’re blue about innovative ways to keep students engaged, but we ironically forget that a teacher’s engagement in his or her job is a necessary precursor to any student’s success.
What would be involved in education reform focused on the teaching profession? First, school administrators need better training in people management so they can effectively uphold high performance standards, coach and mentor teachers under their supervision and devise programs for recognition and advancement of high-performing employees.
Second, school districts must emphasize the vital importance of effectively managing and motivating teachers for all administrators and give them the time and resources to succeed at this task. Third, schools need to create and fund leadership roles that offer new challenges, responsibilities and earnings potential to experienced teachers, thereby giving all faculty members something to strive for.
Finally, various merit-pay schemes need to be explored. Some experts contend there is no objective way to award merit pay to teachers, yet various other industries have formulated ways to rank employees with quantitative and qualitative data and award bonuses or salary raises accordingly. Merit pay for teachers should not be based on student test scores but rather on a comprehensive and meaningful performance review, just like in any other profession.
Merit pay is not all about the money, after all, but about the principle that excellent work will be rewarded more than mediocre work. Without a workplace structure and culture that sends this message loud and clear, we cannot expect schools to improve their teaching quality, and students will suffer the consequences. Any smart company will tell you its most valuable resource is the people it employs. Schools need to start saying the same thing — and taking actions to prove it.
Jennifer Colletti is a teacher at East Chapel Hill High School.
Ms. Colletti raises important points about teacher evaluation that the Chapel Hill Carrboro School Board will be mulling over the next year. Teacher evaluation is one of the top issues the Board will consider this year so I really appreciate her timely contribution and have shared it with my Board colleagues.
I applaud Ms. Colletti for “stepping out of her classroom” long enough to confirm what many others have been saying for a long time: without serious reform of school culture focused on teachers and administrators, reform is doomed to failure.
Ms. Colletti’s realization that there is, literally, no career trajectory for teachers is right on the money. But, as she points out, money isn’t the whole deal here. We all want recognition for our work, especially when it’s work we care about deeply. But schools do a very poor job of creating opportunities for teacher recognition.
Ironically, the biggest impediment to better career paths, individual recognition, and differentiated pay are teachers themselves. The vast majority of teachers, and their unions, consistently oppose any reforms to the basic structure of teacher pay and career advancement possibilities. For better or worse, it will take thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of teachers like Ms. Colletti to alter this long-standing state of affairs in our country as a whole.
But in as far as she has articulated a thoughtful and logical position, I would hope that many of her colleagues at Chapel Hill High and other CHCCS teachers would take up her cause.
I would also expect that the school board will be doing more than merely mulling this over in the coming year. Our district is an academic leader in our state. It should also be a leader for teachers that make that distinction possible.
Thank you for this thoughtful article about retaining and motivating school teachers. You provide concrete solutions to attract and retain the newest generation of teachers who may be more accustomed to corporate reward structures. I was glad to see you recommend teachers to be evaluated on more than just their students’ test scores. Perhaps our public schools can survey teachers to find out what would really motivate them to stay engaged and on the job. Teachers who are passionate about what they do are one key to keeping kids in school. Perhaps if we can reduce the teacher ‘drop out’ rate, we can also influence more students to stay in school and earn meaningful diplomas.