The title of the article made me laugh out loud: Should Teachers Get Overtime?
Subtitle: EdWeek Readers have some thoughts.
I’ll bet they do. Fortunately, the readers who responded to EdWeek’s LinkedIn poll obviously had some experience in teacher compensation, not to mention common sense. Because the answer to this question is obviously that teachers ought to be paid fully professional salaries, since it’s a professional job. Starting now.
Back in 2007, I took part in a teacher-led consortium that explored teacher pay. We followed the time-honored education practice of saving the world one white paper at a time, and produced a thick, glossy report filled with suggestions on how to pay teachers for their special skills and performance, enhancing recruitment and retention. We firmly rejected the common belief that paying teachers for their students’ test scores would do anything good for education–but allowed that the single-scale salary schedule had some flaws and might be tweaked.
Mostly, we were looking for ways to pay experienced, proven educators enough to honor their hard-won expertise and, over time, give them additional leadership responsibilities without forcing them out of the classroom. There were 18 “recognized” teachers in the group, union and non-union, and we didn’t agree on all aspects of what professional compensation looked like, other than the fact that teachers were significantly underpaid for the service they provided to their communities.
There was one thing we all agreed on, however: teaching is not, never has been, a 9 to 5, punch in and out, job. Teachers generally get extra compensation for teaching an extra hour (giving up contractually granted planning time)–or for coaching, and other after-school programming.
But–as commenters on the EdWeek piece noted–if we were to, say, offer teachers money for staying late to read 150 essays and provide written feedback, or to grade dozens of constructed-response math tests, districts would run out of money by October. Or, as one cynical commenter noted, teachers would quickly be forbidden to do anything above and beyond, because it would be deemed too expensive. So–counterproductive.
It’s worth noting that our report on changing teacher pay for good reasons was written nearly 20 years ago, and while there have been a handful of alternative compensation models since (and also plenty of glossy reports), even EdWeek–seriously, one assumes–is still asking readers if teachers should get overtime.
Bummer.
Teacher in a strange land 
I participated in North Carolina’s Career Development program in the 1980s. To get this “bonus” I was observed 6 times in the year and given a score. The bonus was substantial, but the recession of 1991 arrived and the pay was stopped. To make up for my enhanced pay package I was “held harmless” for five years to allow my peers to catch up to my salary. My taxable income decreased over that period as I tried to support a young family.
When North Carolina passed its “ABCs of Education” in the early 1990s it attached a bonus structure that gave teachers in schools with high test scores from $750 to $1500. From 2008-2012, the school where I was principal was recognized as a “School of Distinction” which was supposed to result in $1500 for all teachers. The great Recession meant that no one would get this bonus in any of those four years.
In 2011-12, I was part of a principal cohort that was charged to work with the Gates Foundation to develop a merit pay plan for principals. In a meeting I blasphemed by saying that my work was not motivated by a good evaluation even if it meant more pay.
I saw the headline you cite, but skipped the article. This idea for overtime is bizarre. I was never paid by the hour. When would my overtime start? In my last district, non-certified personnel who worked by the hour were not allowed to work overtime which was a hardship for administrative assistants who literally did not have enough time in the day to complete their work. Principals could be penalized if their secretary worked beyond prescribed hours.
Our various state governments have been kicking the can of teacher pay down the road since Horace Mann. Now we have a President who believes teachers should not be designated as professionals. Our teacher shortage is growing by the day because pay is not keeping up with the cost of living. I see no evidence that this nightmare ends.
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“This idea for overtime is bizarre. I was never paid by the hour. When would my overtime start?”
Exactly–and thanks for providing another handful of ‘alternative compensation’ schemes that failed when put in practice. That’s what has frustrated me most in the discourse around teacher leadership: the idea that somehow money would improve teacher practice, all by itself.
Great comment–thanks.
Nancy
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