Salary Adjustments

Some experts wonder if the traditional teacher-pay system is the right fit for the rising demands of today's schools.

By Melissa McCabe

In the 2001-02 school year, almost 40 percent of all education expenditures were devoted to teachers, or over $132 billion, according to the American Federation of Teachers.

Most of that money was paid out using traditional single-salary compensation schedules, a system that typically pays the same salary to all teachers with the same level of education and number of years in the classroom. But as expectations for student performance rise, experts wonder if that system still makes sense—either to attract talented people into the profession or to recognize teachers who actually improve student learning.

“Static steps and lanes won’t entice Generation Y and ‘echo boomers’ into the classroom,” says Chas Anderson, Minnesota’s assistant education commissioner...