Pay Transparency

My generally weekly coffee and a catch-up with a former colleague last week turned to the subject of pay transparency. Like many (most?) people, I am troubled by employment announcements offering "market rates" or asking for "salary requirements" rather than just posting what is being offered. I find the idea that one can be terminated for discussing one's salary or compensation structure terrible. As we chewed on this particular bone, I was reminded of how pay iniquities first propeled me into educational leadership.

Many years ago, I was recruited to a prestigious school to start and head a program which involved both academic and extra-curricular components. I was also assigned AP classes and, being young and enthusiastic, I coached a JV and SV team each semester. For all this, I received the scale salary, to wit no extra for the exam classes and no extra for the extra-curriculars.

In that department were a collection of older, and in two cases bitter, teachers who did nothing at all extra-curricular and of whom only some taught AP. Several were on their best days desultory in their approach. My exam students outperformed the others by two grade levels across the board, the program I had started won two national awards in its second year and in my second year, I was inundated by requests from senior and junior students wanting to transfer into my courses away from those same senior colleagues.

So at some point I became unhappy that these other teachers were earning 50 - 120% more than me because of a service- or seniority-based salary structure rather than on effort, contribution or results. I did ask for a raise; the first time, the Director laughed as he thought I was joking. The second time, he told me how he had a part-time job all the years before he assumed his now lofty position.

So a few monts later I resigned, enrolled in a Masters in Educational Administration and moved onward and upward. Meanwhile the program I started collapsed after three semesters, the JV team went on to SV and won the state title the follwing year, but after that the program died, and the AP results went back to their previous 3s and occasional 4s. 

I visited the school a couple of years later and had a coffee with the Director. He told me I shouldn't have left.

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