The CEO educator - Oct. 1, 2009:
"You mention differentiating pay -- rewarding teachers who achieve better results. In the business world that's obvious, but it's not the way things have traditionally been done in public education. How hard was it to make that happen?
Public education is an entirely different culture. Fundamentally, the only differentiator is seniority. The power in the system is fundamentally the power of the bureaucracy, of the political forces, of the union.
When I was at Bertelsmann, we were constantly focused on how to incentivize the workforce, inject increasing accountability, deciding where to substitute technology for human capital."
In a public school system it's an entirely different set of questions. And until you get used to the questions, you can't think too well about how you want to answer them.
But one could argue that public school teachers, especially the best ones, aren't in it for the money in the first place. Does paying them for performance really work?
I think it does. We haven't seen enough of it in America to know. But think about it this way: Every university I know pays differently for science teachers than it does for English teachers. But I pay the exact same for a science teacher and a physical education teacher. And then I pay the same whether you work in my highest-need school or in my most successful school.
Look, money isn't the only thing that drives teachers -- indeed, it isn't the only thing that drives school chancellors -- but money is an ingredient in the mix of things that matter to people. Fairly compensating them if they take on the tougher assignments, if they're doing the work where it's harder to attract people, like science and math -- that seems to me a critical component.
"You mention differentiating pay -- rewarding teachers who achieve better results. In the business world that's obvious, but it's not the way things have traditionally been done in public education. How hard was it to make that happen?
Public education is an entirely different culture. Fundamentally, the only differentiator is seniority. The power in the system is fundamentally the power of the bureaucracy, of the political forces, of the union.
When I was at Bertelsmann, we were constantly focused on how to incentivize the workforce, inject increasing accountability, deciding where to substitute technology for human capital."
In a public school system it's an entirely different set of questions. And until you get used to the questions, you can't think too well about how you want to answer them.
But one could argue that public school teachers, especially the best ones, aren't in it for the money in the first place. Does paying them for performance really work?
I think it does. We haven't seen enough of it in America to know. But think about it this way: Every university I know pays differently for science teachers than it does for English teachers. But I pay the exact same for a science teacher and a physical education teacher. And then I pay the same whether you work in my highest-need school or in my most successful school.
Look, money isn't the only thing that drives teachers -- indeed, it isn't the only thing that drives school chancellors -- but money is an ingredient in the mix of things that matter to people. Fairly compensating them if they take on the tougher assignments, if they're doing the work where it's harder to attract people, like science and math -- that seems to me a critical component.