Oregon Teacher Compensation -- You can't separate what you reward from what you get.

If you've been doing the same job for eight years, are you going to be better at it in your ninth year? It's possible. It's just as possible that you've fallen into a rut and your performance is going downhill. But in Oregon schools, it's simply assumed that you're better so you'll be paid more.

Suppose you're a young journalism teacher and one day, a newspaper offers you a one-year contract to write about city government for them. Do you take it? If you do, your teaching after you return to the classroom will be infused with real experiences that you can share with your students. And your paycheck will be lower than it would have been if you'd just hunkered down in your teaching job. It will remain lower year after year until you eventually get to the top of the scale.

Will you get paid better if you get good grades in college? No. Will you get paid better if your graduate courses are in your field, rather than near-useless classes in pedagogy? No. Can you get better paid for outstanding performance in class? No.

The practices followed by almost all (perhaps all) Oregon school districts reward plodding conformity, risk avoidance, minimal classroom performance and irrelevant education at least equally with, and sometimes higher than, all the qualities we want to find in our public school teachers. The Oregon Education Association insists that this is the best possible approach. I suppose it's possible, but it seems awfully unlikely. I'd like to see at least a speck of evidence that it is.