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Charter Schools as Laboratories

By 3L at Seton Hall University School of Law and Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review.

The NY Times reports that a Washington Heights-based charter school will be offering teachers a salary of $125,000 (plus a bonus based on school-wide performance). This is more than twice as much as teachers in NYC public schools earn. The question is whether higher salaries will result in improved student performance.

The school's founder, Zeke Vanderhoek, is exploring whether salaries will attract the best teachers possible, and if those teachers can in turn show that teacher quality is the key ingredient to a successful learning environment.

Teachers will take on responsibilities outside of the classroom (reducing costs for administrative staff), work longer hours, and teach a longer school year; the school will have limited range of electives (music & Latin).

Vanderhoek, a Teach For America alum, will serve as the school's principal, and will actually take a lower salary ($90K) than his teachers. His idea is turning heads in the educational establishment. The president of the NYC principal's union, Ernest Logan, said the idea of paying principals less than teachers was "the craziest thing [he's] ever heard." He explained that the school will devolve into "chaos" because the school won't have a clearly defined leader--apparently, Mr. Logan believes that salary alone establishes leadership and that teachers and students simply won't adhere to rules articulated by a principal that earns less than a teacher. His claims are all the more astounding considering the level of initiative and leadership that Mr. Vanderhoek has demonstrating in establishing this school. Randi Weingarten, the president of the NYC teacher's union, stressed the downside of having non-unionized teachers in charter school classrooms. She asks: "What happens the first time a teacher says something like, ?I don?t agree with you??" Well, I imagine the principal and the teacher, as two professionals, will discuss the problem; however, considering the principal is the school leader, in all but the most rare circumstances, the teacher should defer to the principal.

Significantly higher teacher salaries are not new to the charter school scene (though I am unaware of salaries reaching this high). The KIPP academies, model examples of what can be done with excellent teachers & school leaders, takes a similar tack.

Full post as published by Urban Law Journal on March 07, 2008 (boomark / email).