Non-Responsive Responses On Teacher Compensation And Retention Policies

A number of people who I customarily disagree with on education policy have recommended to me E.D. Kain's post disagreeing with me on education policy. But after reading his post, I just don't see what it is that I said that he disagrees with. Here's how Kain thinks we should treat teachers:

Here is my alternative plan: make teaching fun and rewarding. Treat teachers as autonomous professionals and make teaching more exclusive. Give teachers in urban and rural areas where turnover is high and schools are under-funded more support. Senior teachers can act as mentors at these schools. Expand the role of veteran teachers beyond classroom instruction. Let them use their experience and knowledge to help new teachers and try to curb the 50% turn-over rates.

That all sounds great to me! So what is it we were disagreeing about? What I said in my post is that if you take the idea that teaching matters seriously, then you can't seriously think that the Last In, First Out layoff policies and seniority-based compensation schemes that are mandated by most teaching collective bargaining agreements are a good idea. I don't understand what about Kain's ideas constitute an "alternative" to that. Implementing my ideas doesn't prevent us from implementing Kain's ideas. Implementing Kain's ideas doesn't prevent us from implementing my ideas. Kain might be interested to learn that his idea about expanding the role of veteran teachers is something my "reform"-y colleagues on the education team recently put out a paper about in which they note that this, too, is something that will require revision of most existing collective bargaining agreements.

Meanwhile, treating teachers like autonomous professional in an exclusive field isn't an alternative to changing hiring, compensation, and retention practices it requires us to do so. I think the Gordon/Kane/Staiger paper on "Identifying Effective Teachers Using Performance On The Job" (PDF) rather than a cumbersome-but-arbitrary certification system is still about the best thing on this.