Salary and Salary Models

The Evolution of Salary Models in Education

Salary models in education have evolved from socalled boarding round approaches in the 1800s, which provided teachers room and board as a major component of their compensation, to grade-based models in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Grade-based schedules differentiated salary primarily on the basis of level of instruction (paying higher salaries to secondary than to elementary teachers) but were often used to discriminate on the basis of gender and race as well (with higher salaries paid to men than women and to White teachers than Black).

The inequities of grade-based models were addressed in the 1920s to 1940s with the widespread adoption of the single or uniform salary schedule, which distributes additional wage increments among teachers solely on the bases of longevity and advanced training. Two characteristics distinguish one single salary schedule from another:

• 1.
  The slope or steepness of the pay gradient (i.e., how quickly wages increase from the entry level to the top step on the schedule)
• 2.
  The magnitude of the increments paid for different levels of advanced training (i.e., how much a system is willing to expend to encourage teachers to engage in formal professional development)

Advantages and Disadvantages of the Single Salary Schedule

Using experience and advanced training as the primary criteria for wage differentials is considered relatively objective and easy to quantify without direct supervision, thus the cost of administering a single salary schedule is relatively low. Furthermore, paying higher salaries to teachers with more experience and training creates incentives for individuals to remain within a school system, which should promote stability, and to continue to develop professionally, which should promote better instruction and higher student achievement. As a result of these perceived advantages, the single salary schedule remains the most commonly used salary model in the education.

Nevertheless, the utility of paying teachers based on criteria not directly related to performance or the achievement of students has been challenged repeatedly, most notably in 1983 with the publication of A Nation at Risk, which advocated the adoption of merit [Page 893]pay salary models, which explicitly link teacher performance to student performance, usually as measured by standardized achievement tests.

Another concern about teacher salaries is that entry wages in education typically lag behind those in other professions requiring equivalent levels of educational preparation (e.g., accounting or engineering). It is often argued that starting salaries in teaching need to be increased if the profession is to become more competitive in attracting “the best and the brightest.”

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