Education

Teacher Salaries: The Movie

By Anthony Rebora — August 04, 2008 1 min read
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Bill Ferriter reports on his involvment in a very interesting-sounding initiative called The Teacher Salary Project, a sort of evolving online documentary intended to bring attention to the teacher pay issue. It’s being produced by, among others, novelist Dave Eggers and educator Nínive Calegari, who—you might remember—co-authored the much-talked-about book Teachers Have It Easy a few years ago. (The title, of course, is ironic.)

For his part, Ferriter thinks we’ve reached a “tipping point” on teacher salaries at which “changes to the ways that we reward teachers are truly possible.” And if he has his druthers, those changes will come largely in the form of merit pay:

While I believe that there is a central need to raise salaries for all educators—consider that the average starting salaries for educators currently stands at $31,753 while the average starting salary for college graduates in non-education majors stands at $42,229—I also believe that blanket increases for all educators regardless of performance cheapens our profession.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Blogboard blog.