Sensible Compensation Policies That Add Up

By Brenda Welburn, Former Executive Director of the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE)

Welburn was a moderator and resource expert on improving educator effectiveness through evaluation and compensation reform at The Hunt Institute’s 2014 Holshouser Legislators Retreat. (To learn more about this issue, see The Institute’s special re:VISION series on educator effectiveness here.) She served as the executive director of NASBE from 1994 until 2012 and is known as an association manager and legislative professional with more than 35 years of experience in policy development and analysis in education and human service issues. Below she shares her insight on teacher compensation.

The movement of tying teacher compensation to student achievement has gained momentum throughout the nation, but not without serious debate on how to achieve the goals of the movement without adversely affecting the teaching profession and the learning environment.

To some it seems like a simple premise; those who perform at the highest level should receive the highest rewards. Yet for years policymakers have wrestled with the dilemma of how to support accountability plans that measure proficiency, while acknowledging the significance of student growth and progress among those students with the greatest deficiencies. To do this in a way that rewards milestones in progress – without impeding the goal of genuine student competency – is no easy task. One teacher’s class may have higher test scores, while another’s shows more measurable growth. The idea that student achievement in isolation can be the sole determinant of a teacher’s effectiveness, and thus their compensation package, does not reflect the reality of practice.

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