Fortunately, there is a growing movement to treat good and bad teachers differently. At the school where I teach, we have created three important policies to attract and retain good teachers, all without spending any more than neighboring schools. First, we have a rigorous support and evaluation system for novice teachers, which helps them become good teachers or eventually removes them from the classroom. Second, our pay scale provides significant raises to teachers after their third and fifth years of teaching, precisely when many teachers consider leaving the profession. Third, we provide performance bonuses to outstanding teachers who significantly increase student achievement.
These policies have helped to promote student achievement. All students deserve good teachers, and good teachers deserve to be recognized for their extraordinary work.
Jeff Vogel
Cambridge
The writer is a history teacher at Prospect Hill Academy, a charter school with campuses in Somerville and Cambridge.
High performance calls for more than one year of study
RE “BRING teachers’ pay into this century’’ (Op-ed, Aug. 31): Michael Bennet is right to say that convoluted incentive structures in education diminish the quality of the teaching core. However, he does not address the connection between low starting salaries and teacher preparation.
High performance on a complex task, such as teaching, requires many years of study, practice, and feedback. But the current norm for teacher preparation is one year. Would we trust our children with a doctor or lawyer who had trained for a single year?
I was lucky enough to attend a teacher preparation program - now defunct because of lack of funding - that lasted two years. The extra year gave me more time to collaborate with an expert scholar-practitioner who had proved her ability to augment student learning. Additional time to work closely with such professionals would benefit students greatly.
