Metro Atlanta teachers have some of the highest lifetime earnings among teachers in large school districts nationally.
That's according to a new report from the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonprofit that advocates for policies it believes will increase the number of effective teachers.
Over a 30-year career, an Atlanta Public Schools teacher will earn about $2.2 million. Adjusting for the cost of living in different cities, only three of the 113 districts included in the report ranked higher: Pittsburgh, the District of Columbia and Columbus, Ohio.
Cobb County teachers will earn about $1.9 million over a 30-year career, placing them 15th among the districts in the report after adjusting for the cost of living. In Fulton County, the figure is also about $1.9 million. Gwinnett and DeKalb counties also rank in the top 30. Those figures, which are based on 2013-2014 salary schedules, assume teachers earn master’s degrees and pursue additional education throughout their careers.
The NCTQ says it takes teachers in many other districts too long to reach top salaries and that makes it harder to attract and keep the best teachers. But it does not mean metro Atlanta teachers are making too much, said the NCTQ's Nancy Waymack.
“It means that their salary is growing faster than their peers in other districts. That allows them to have more flexibility earlier in their careers” to do things like buy a house, raise a family and settle down in the Atlanta area, she said.
Despite relatively high pay in Atlanta Public Schools, district leaders have said Atlanta struggles to recruit teachers. District employees got raises this year for the first time in several years, but money isn't necessarily the reason teachers choose other districts or quit.
Superintendent Meria Carstarphen said in August that the district’s less than fully functional operations “set our teachers up for a lot of frustration.”
In 2015, Atlanta plans to begin its hiring process earlier to snag the best recruits, district human resources chief Pamela Hall said. The district is also focusing on giving teachers mentoring and more training. Atlanta has no plans to overhaul how most teachers are paid, but soon plans to have an outside group review the compensation structure for all employees.
Most school districts in Georgia and nationally pay teachers based on how long they’ve been teaching and degrees they’ve earned. Georgia policymakers have flirted for years with the idea of merit pay for teachers.
This year, 26 Georgia school districts that received money from the state’s $400 million federal Race to the Top grant will have performance-pay programs, according to the Georgia Department of Education. These scattered programs, which will award bonuses of up to $2,500, are a scaled-back version of the comprehensive performance-pay program Georgia originally promised in its application for the federal money.
Some districts are considering more extensive changes.
Fulton County plans to award highly rated teachers who move to low-performing schools $20,000 stipends and give teachers reimbursements — rather than salary bumps — for earning advanced degrees. The district is considering other ways to pay the best teachers more, such as having a great teacher work with more students or mentor several junior teachers in exchange for bigger salaries.
The way teachers are compensated needs to change, Fulton County superintendent Robert Avossa said.
“I’ve got do something. I can’t sit by and wait with graduation rates as low as they are,” he said.
Many teachers remain skeptical of plans to tie pay to performance.
“In addition to the challenges of finding an objective way to measure ‘merit’ that will have rigor, fairness and reliability, those proposing (teacher merit pay) tend to have champagne dreams on beer budgets,” Professional Association of Georgia Educators spokesman Tim Callahan said.
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