The Teacher Pay Reform In American Public Schools

Education research convincingly shows that teacher quality is the most important schooling factor influencing student achievement. But stories abound concerning the quality of teachers, the poor quality of teacher preparation, the rate at which teachers are leaving the profession and worsening shortages of teachers. Data from national surveys show that close to 96 percent of traditional public school teachers are employed in school districts that make use of the single salary schedules, which could neither meets the demands of teacher labor market nor implements an effective incentive to the teachers.Firstly, this paper examines the history of three teacher pay reforms in the American public schools, beginning with 1800(?)and continuing on to the present day. It is largely a review and synthesis of existing educational literature, with the aim of providing more comprehensive views and relations of teacher pay in light of changing social, economic and cultural factors. Secondly, this paper collects a series of most recent datum from the American teacher labor market, exerts many quantitative studies and analyzes the psychological tendency of teachers and non-teachers towards teaching, which show that both the level and the nature of teacher pay are troubling. Thirdly, following the presentation of current performance-related pay programs are the classified inherent difficulties of this pay system and the possible solution. Fourthly, several political and systematical hurdles to carrying out alternative teacher pay system are explained: union power, school district and state politics, institutional inertia and etc. Last but not least, some new conclusions, prospects and suggestions of teacher pay reform are given based on all studies above.While there have been numerous experiments in US education study in our country, the introductions and researches on American teacher pay reform in public schools are very slender. The US experience study in this paper will serve as an instructive guide for our reform measures of school management in China.