NYC charter to pay teachers more than lawyers

But the unions don’t like this idea. A proposed New York City charter school is to pay teachers $125,000. There is even thought of adding incentive pay for high performance.

The idea is that the higher salaries will be made possible by becoming more efficient and by reducing the number of support staff.

According to the Friday New York Times, the head of NYC’s principals’ union, Ernest A. Logan,

called the notion of paying the principal less than the teachers “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.” “It’s nice to have a first violinist, a first tuba, but you’ve got to have someone who brings them all together,” Mr. Logan said. “If you cheapen the role of the school leader, you’re going to have anarchy and chaos.”

Self-interest I get. May not approve, but I get it. Then there is pure self-preservation–that domain is reserved for Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers. She commented that

the hefty salaries “a good experiment.” But she said that when teachers were not unionized, and most charter school teachers are not, their performance can be hampered by a lack of power in dealing with the principal. “What happens the first time a teacher says something like, ‘I don’t agree with you?’ ”

Mike Antonucci, in today’s Education Intelligence Agency communique’, makes a good point:

UFT hasn’t gotten teachers a $125,000 salary after 47 years of trying. A non-union charter schools opens with that, with no negotiations required.

Will it work? Let’s try.