Retaining Effective Teachers Policy
Maryland gives local districts the authority for pay scales, eliminating barriers such as state salary schedules and other regulations that control how districts pay teachers. The state allows each county board to appoint all teachers and "set their salaries."
Discourage districts from tying compensation to advanced degrees.
While still leaving districts the flexibility to establish their own pay scale, Maryland should articulate policies that definitively discourage districts from tying compensation to advanced degrees, in light of the extensive research showing that such degrees do not have an impact on teacher effectiveness.
Discourage salary schedules that imply that teachers with the most experience are the most effective.
Similarly, Maryland should articulate policies that discourage districts from determining the highest steps on the pay scale solely by seniority.
Maryland disagreed with this analysis. Maryland asserted that employment and labor issues remain under the autonomous authority of the local school system. However, the Education Reform Act of 2010 allows teachers and principals designated as Highly Effective under a revised evaluation system being piloted to receive locally negotiated financial incentives to work in low-achieving schools. This connects the new evaluation system to compensation. Additionally, in an effort to actively support effective models, the Maryland Department of Education has grants available through Race to the Top to local school systems that allow teachers and principals to receive incentives upon being rated Highly Effective. Finally, as part of local RTTT funding, superintendents, human resources officers and local union leaders are currently convened into the Performance Compensation Workgroup, which is exploring various incentive and compensation models after examining models from five local Maryland districts that already have such programs. MSDE has convened this group and is supporting this work.
Financial incentives are addressed in Goals 4-E and 4-F. NCTQ sees no point of disagreement between the analysis and the state's response.