pay (some) teachers more

Two recent NY Times articles argue that improving both teacher’s low salaries and reputation are key to solving educational problems in the United States.

Pay Teachers More

U.S. Is Urged to Raise Teachers’ Status

Without much ado, this analysis can be transferred to European countries. Both articles draw heavily from a 2010 McKinsey study titled “Closing the talent gap: Attracting and retaining top-third graduates to careers in teaching”. By means of several bold statements the authors justify their policy proposals:

Top performing nations recruit 100% of their new teachers from the top third. In the U.S. it’s 23% and 14% in high-poverty schools.

Average teacher salary [in the U.S.] as a percentage of GDP has decreased at roughly 2% per year.

With regard to Germany however, the study states that German teachers’ salaries as percentage of GDP rank among the top 3 worldwide, way beyond OECD average. That is probably why the second NY Times article might be more relevant for Europe’s largest economy. Taking into account that wages are generally quite low in Germany, teachers perform relatively well. (Although this is hard to understand from a Swiss point of view.)

But what is truly preventing Germany’s top-third graduates to become teachers is the job’s awful reputation. Some decades ago German parents addressed their children’s teacher with “Mr. Teacher”. Doing this in 2011 would be nothing but strange. In addition, the decision to become a teacher implies low opportunities of fostering your career. Being stuck a lowly state-run bureaucratic school is in no case comparable to a shining career in a successful private company.

Simply raising overall paychecks for teachers and launching a reputation campaign is clearly not the answer. But changing teacher training at universities by heavily raising requirements, increasing incentives for top students to become teacher (financial benefits, improved career opportunities), and performance-based salaries would be a starting point. Notabene, this would be way more easy in a private education system. But yeah, that’s a different story.