Rich Mullin, 11 years ago

I think that keeping excellent teachers in the classroom and attracting talented men and women into the professional vocation of educator is obviously critical to the social and economic vitality and future of the state of Texas and the nation. I am curious of how many of our most talented teachers in k-12 are promoted out of the class room and into the Administrative career path, whether it is the School Principle career track or centralized administration career track. The incentives to move out of the classroom are upside down. I understand that principles and administrators need to be credentialed educators in order to administer the complex and expensive mission of educating and preparing our children for success, But they do not have to be compensated to the degree that that is where the best teachers migrate to.. What if the financial and career incentives were structured in such a way that an excellent teacher, based on meaningful metrics and documented performance across those metric had better career and financial opportunities to stay in the classroom, rather than move into “Administration”? If a graduated, longer cycle tenure system was also used for “in the classroom” teachers with consistent proven results to incent them to perform and stay in the classroom, we might get some conitious improvement. Further, Principals and Administrative professionals would have lower compensation and promotional opportunities as well as “Profit and Loss type” performance metrics that drive graduation from High School, SAT/ACT scores and graduation from Texas Universities and Colleges (Texas colleges so we can measure not only how many kids attend college post k-12, but actually graduate). Success vs $ per student. So the balance is weighted heavily on incentives that keep our best teachers teaching, earned job security through a tenure system that is longer, graduated and accelerative based on performance. This would also attract our best and brightest to become educators and motivate teachers who perform just at standard to do better.

As some people will tell you, the best sales reaps do not always make the best sales managers, and the best teachers becoming administrators does not necessarily promote an enduring improvement in the education the children of Texas receive or the cost of that education… best regards.