EDITORIAL - Contrasting approaches to teachers' pay

Last weekend, Michell A. Rhee, the chancellor for schools in Washington, DC, in the United States, announced that next month, she will fire 226 of the district's 4,000 teachers, and that over the next year or so, "a not insignificant number" is likely to meet a similar fate.

Those currently on the chopping block received poor appraisals under an evaluation system aimed at holding teachers accountable for educational outcomes. This is in keeping with an initiative by the Obama administration to lift standardised test scores across America.

Apart from those getting the immediate boot, DC's assessment highlighted another 737 who were deemed to be "minimally effective" at their jobs. They have a year to lift their performance. Rhee does not expect all of them to make the grade. So, some "will be moved out of the system for poor performance".

Tough action?

The chancellor's action, on the face of it, appears tough, especially during these difficult economic times in the US, with unemployment hovering at near 10 per cent. Perhaps! But there is a larger context, which this newspaper believes offers valuable lessons to Jamaica.

When Washington, DC, instituted the accountability system - and we suppose a similar tack was taken in other jurisdictions - it granted new contracts, inclusive of salary hikes of over a fifth. Seniority protection was removed and judgements would be made against people's performance in the classroom. Teachers were also promised substantial bonuses if they met specific performance criteria.

Let us contrast the Washington, DC, initiative and Chancellor Rhee's response to how we have approached matters in Jamaica, where there is consensus that we are not particularly well-served by too many of our teachers.

In 2008, Finance Minister Audley Shaw decided he would implement the findings of a study to lift the salaries of government-employed teachers to at least 80 per cent of the pay of comparative professionals in the private sector.

The initial bill, at a time when the economy was clearly heading into a recession, was $15 billion. Circumstances notwithstanding, Mr Shaw went ahead. Neither he nor the Education Minister, Andrew Holness, demanded anything in return from teachers.

Functional illiterates

Yet in Jamaica, up to a third of our children complete primary school as functional illiterates. Over 40 per cent of the students at grade four fail to master the critical components of literacy and numeracy. At the high school level, fewer than 20 per cent of the students "graduate" with the matriculation requirements for tertiary-level education. And so on.

Mr Holness has been working hard to fix things, but little has changed in the past two years - except that having paid about half the retroactive salaries, the Government found itself in economic trouble. It has been forced to ask for time - three fiscal years - to cover the arrears of $8 billion. Both sides continue to quarrel over the matter, with the teachers' union, the Jamaica Teachers' Association, referring the issue to the International Labour Organisation.

It is not too late, we believe, for a recalibration. It would make sense to link the wages of teachers, including the private-sector benchmarking and future increments, to performance. That, after all, is the way of professionals, which we expect teachers to be - not recipients of welfare.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.