Gov. Nathan Deal has taken a stand sure to cause discussion and debate next year, on one of the long-standing issues in public education: teacher pay. The governor wants to move toward some type of merit pay system.
Teachers in metro school districts got pay raises this year, the first for many in quite a while. But there's more involved in figuring out how to compensate teachers than coming up with a dollar figure.
Some argue the best instructors are entitled to higher pay. Teachers groups generally worry about plans to link their pay to the quality of their work, though, and many observers agree that measuring teacher quality is no simple, clear-cut chore.
Fulton County's new pilot program linking performance to pay also tries to address another chronic problem, lower performance of students in high-poverty neighborhoods, where the schools often have the least-experienced teachers. Fulton offered salary supplements for top teachers to work in those neediest schools.
Gov. Deal's education-reform commission, meanwhile, included changing the basis for paying teachers in its list of recently completed recommendations. Traditionally, teachers' pay depends on their years of experience and academic degrees.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will continue to cover the ideas, experiments, debate and discussion related to teacher pay. For a sampling of some of our coverage this year, click on the links below, to stories accessible on our subscribers’ website, myajc.com:
Education reformers consider higher starting pay for new teachers
