by AFT President Sandra Feldman
October 1998

Salaries, as any
teacher will tell you,
are not the main problem.

A spotlight has been turned on teachers this school year, illuminating some dark corners of the world in which they work--inadequate pay, little professional support, difficult working conditions. It's also caused a sudden flurry of concern: Over the next ten years, we will need to hire 2.2 million new teachers. Where will we find them?

With serious shortages already hitting many districts--especially those where the need for good teachers is greatest and the pay and conditions are the worst--some boards of education have come up with the bright idea of offering signing bonuses to attract new teachers. Hey, if it works for sports stars and CEOs, why not?

Sign Here!

Baltimore's lure was $5,000 towards a house closing (for new teachers willing to live in the city), plus $1,200 in moving expenses. Detroit offered $3,000 just for signing on the dotted line. The Massachusetts incentive, far and away the most generous of any I saw, put up $20,000 over four years for 100 of the top candidates.

Easy Come, Easy Go

Though surely this is an idea worth trying, there is a little problem. What will keep these teachers from quitting when the bonus is spent if salaries remain low and working conditions don't change. Right now, the attrition rate is 22 percent overall in the first three years and nearly 50 percent for teachers in urban schools. Women, the majority of teachers for years, now have many more options than they did a generation ago. Other professions more attractive to young talent are wide open to them; and the wage differentials are painfully obvious.

Teachers' salaries have risen in recent years, thanks to the efforts of teacher unions, but not as far or as fast as they need to do in order to make teaching competitive with other fields. Other countries manage to pay teachers wages that reflect the important job they do--in Japan, for example, teachers are the highest paid civil servants. The relatively poor pay of U.S. teachers is an embarrassing but accurate reflection of our society's priorities and our shameful neglect of children, especially our poor children.

Low Tech

And salaries, as any teacher will tell you, are hardly the main problem. There are all the small--and large--things that make the job tough. Not having enough materials and books and supplies, for example. Teachers often spend hundreds of dollars of their own money to make sure their students have what they need.

We talk a lot about computers, about the sophisticated and powerful technology that links us to the remotest parts of the globe. Yet most teachers, if they want to call a parent about how her kid is doing in math, have to go down the hall and wait in line for a telephone.

Kids Know the Score

I've been in countless classrooms where I've asked youngsters how many would like to be teachers. Sometimes not a single hand goes up. Do we think bright college students aren't put off by the teacher-bashing they hear and see in the media. Do we think they haven't noticed for themselves the working conditions their teachers had to put up with--and the often lousy pay?

In a Bind

Young people who want to teach want to help children. They want to do meaningful work, to make a difference. They also want to support families and feel successful.

The school districts offering the incentives are on to something. If you want to get the best, you need to make it worth their while. Otherwise someone else--some other school district (some other profession)--will grab them. But it's foolish to think that attracting talent is enough. What kind of baseball team would hand out signing bonuses and expect a championship team at the same time as its players had to work for less money than other professional athletes--and play on poorly maintained fields with outmoded equipment. No one would try this in baseball. Why should we think it will work in the schools?