Think this is a bad time to become a teacher? Think again. America is seeing an unprecedented amount of energy being put into nationwide education reform. Through President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment act, billions of dollars are being poured into our public schools in an attempt to revamp and rebuild our way of teaching American youth. Part of this plan was unveiled on November 12^th in the form of the “Race to the Top Competition”.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan released the final application of the $4.35 billion incentive based plan. The idea is to reward the states that can best raise student performance and inspire achievement through innovative education reform. “The president said last week that Race to the Top will require states to take an all-hands-on-deck approach,” Duncan said, according to a Thursday press release. “We will award grants to the states that have led the way in reform and will show the way for the rest of the country to follow.”

The plot was fueled by public input, as more than 1,100 people left comments, critiques, and suggestions ranging from a paragraph to 67 pages. Through this feedback, the Department of Education was able to construct a more refined and complete application. States hoping to qualify for the reform reward money will have to have plans approved by the Department and must have no legal barriers to linking student growth and achievement data to teachers and principals for the purposes of evaluation.

Because this grant money is given in the form of a competition, states will have to work hard to separate themselves and create the most progressive reform programs possible. This gives struggling states the chance to revamp and heal internal education programs. Different states are responding differently to the chance of receiving millions in grant money. New York and California, among others, will have to do away with foolish laws that prohibit school districts from linking student performance to teacher pay. This gives our teachers added incentive to do the best they can to raise overall performance.

With more attention than we are used to being poured into education programs, this is as important a time as ever for more people to get involved in teaching America’s youth. Whether or not a state wins the competition, this program is clearly a win-win scenario for our schools and students. Find out what your state is doing to bring education into the 21^st century and how you can help make it happen.

This is an EDU-torial by Justin Kloc: Justin is currently an undergraduate student at Lehigh University. Nearing the end of formal education for the time being, Justin is passionate and enthusiastic of its value for everyone.

The Equity Project (TEP) Charter School made a bet this year that the most important factor in the academic success of its students was the quality of their teachers. And they have gone all in.

The TEP Charter School has implemented a radical redesign of the traditional scholastic model, greatly increasing the focus on their teachers. And why not? Our teachers are the ones who inspire us, engage us, and encourage us to learn through everyday contact. This new model has TEP searching for the most valuable and talented educators the country has to offer. In locating and bringing these teachers to TEP, they employ the three R’s: Rigorous Qualifications, Redefined expectations, and Revolutionary Compensation.

Their Rigorous qualifications require that applicants submit proof of their expert subject-area knowledge, teaching expertise and experience, strong curriculum development skills, and outstanding verbal ability. To display this they must submit written accounts, video records of in-class sessions with corresponding written analysis, originally developed curricular tools, a day-long teaching audition, and more.

TEP has also redefined the expectations for their teachers by focusing on one guiding principle: “students are best served by teachers who make their own continued growth a priority.” TEP focuses on their teacher’s day by incorporating preparation and observation sessions and requiring that each teacher teach a single subject and grade level. This allows them to use all their preparation time for that single subject. They focus on their teacher’s year by incorporating a 6-week Summer Development Institute each summer to evaluate successes and failures of the past school year, set challenges and goals for themselves, and plan concrete changes for the upcoming school year. In the long term, TEP allows its teachers to take a 1 year sabbatical from TEP after four or five consecutive teaching years. These sabbaticals can be used for employment (a think tank), education (obtaining an MAT), or for travelling and all of which serve to promote the growth of TEP’s teachers.

One of the most interesting aspects of TEPs strategy lies in their revolutionary view of teacher compensation. Each teacher earns an annual base salary of $125,000 with benefits and the potential to earn a bonus of up to $25,000 (increasing by $5,000 each year of employment) depending on how well they meet the goals they set for themselves. TEP is able to afford such compensation formulas without receiving any more funding than the standard New York City Charter School.

How can a school afford to compensate their teachers this way?

Well, TEP claims that through more highly qualified teachers they increase their productivity and quality, which frees up funding to be used as teacher compensation. For example, TEP does not employ any Assistant Principals or Supervisors other than the Principal nor do they contract any of their instructional services to educational consultants or other organizations.

This idea that teacher compensation should reflect teaching ability allows TEP to attract the teachers that meet the first 2 of their three R’s: Rigorous Qualifications and Redefined expectations. NPR recently ran a story on Joe Carborne, the new gym teacher for TEP. He exemplifies TEPs mission to find the best teachers possible through competitive compensation. The former strength trainer of the Los Angeles Lakers and personal strength coach of Kobe Bryant, Joe Carborne brings an enthusiasm to gym class that might seem foreign to classically trained public school students.

TEP is working hard to bring the best teachers from around the country to their students. However, even if this strategy were implemented nationwide, we would not be able to solve our education problems. If every school offered $125,000 salaries we would soon exhaust our supply of exemplary educators. For strategies like this to work on a larger scale, we need to remain focused not only on bringing the best and brightest to train our children, but also on increasing the supply of these great teachers. Higher levels of compensation for teachers sounds like a great incentive to encourage more people to strive to become the exemplary teachers that America needs.

This is an EDU-torial by Mike Davidson: Mike is currently a graduate student at New York University working toward his Masters Degree. His recent experiences through most levels of education drive his beliefs and hopes for education reform.

As President Obama doles out billions from the pockets of taxpayers and eventually their children, there needs to be some concrete measure that the stimulus plan is actually working to save jobs and get the country back on its feet. As far as education goes, the Obama administration claims that it has saved over 250,000 educator jobs in the past year.

The spending has been shown by many states to stabilize the balance sheets and budgets of hundreds of school districts. The schools then report their expenditures back to their state so the government knows where the money goes. So far, it has been reported by schools that the Tampa Bay area alone saved 2,800 education jobs due to the stimulus money. 6,000 out of the 62,000 education jobs saved in California were saved in Los Angeles. 2,600 were saved in Utah, 8,500 and 5,900 in Missouri and Minnesota respectively and 14,500 were saved in Michigan. These findings should be music to the public’s ears especially those citizens in public colleges and those with children because teachers impact their lives on a daily basis.

Unfortunately these numbers aren’t all what they seem. Although the numbers are impressive, the term “saved jobs” is quite broad. Many teachers around the country have kept their jobs because of the stimulus, but their benefits and wages continue to decline while their class sizes grow. The quality of compensation was not evaluated in the survey of “saved” educational jobs. What’s more concerning is the lack of mention of how many teaching jobs were lost in spite of all of the stimulus money.

Since it is not entirely possible to know exactly how many jobs were “saved,” these numbers are an estimate on the positive effects of the stimulus bill on the realm of education by preventing layoffs. But it is a poor estimate of the bill’s effect for the individuals of the educational system. The stimulus money is only a band-aid for the American educational system, and a flimsy band-aid at that.