Would BC teachers benefit from a new pay model?

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Giving more money to those teachers who go above and beyond, it’s a pay model recently brought up by Alberta’s Education Minister.

It’s also being studied right now in the US while some states have considered it and tried it out.

In most places, including here in BC, teacher salaries are determined based on their education and experience. Those who are for the model say that some teachers spend noticeably more time with their students but don’t get paid for it.

“You’d have to invest a significant amount of money particularly in the BC context to greatly expand the testing that we’re doing.  The current FSA (Foundation Skills Assessment) testing we have wouldn’t work,” says Dan Laitsch with the Faculty of Education at SFU.

He says there are a number of different ways in which merit pay could be implemented, most look at how well students do.

“To have a merit pay based system you need to have substantial, high quality broad ranging assessment data in the tradition merit pay structures of awarding teachers for test score increases.”

Many experts do argue though that that kind of system does not boost student performance.

A study based on what has been done in Chicago so far has shown that there is a greater teacher retention rate at the schools.

Neither side of the educational argument support the idea

Susan Lambert, BCTF President, says paying teachers that way makes things too competitive and would give educators no reason to help each other out.

“Competitive pay schemes would be detrimental to building that interdependency that is very very necessary.”

John Puddifoot with the BCPAC says it’s hard to rank teachers, because what goes into figuring that out — has never been determined.

“We’d like to see them move towards a system where credentials are updated for all teachers, not just teachers who are trying to qualify and that would certainly improve things.”