The Post-Dispatch has an interesting feature story on the Ladue School District urging its teachers to obtain a masters degree.  It is not at all uncommon for school districts to pay teachers with advanced degrees more than those with a bachelor’s degree.  But as the article asks, is that fair?  Does it make sense?  Ladue chooses to measure performance and reward teachers with pay increases for delivering results.  Some of these teachers do not have masters degrees, so the issue becomes one of how effective the additional degree really is.  If the degree focuses on a specialty area, like secondary mathematics or special education, it makes a great deal of sense, because it builds an expertise, provides a forum for developing more advanced skills — skills that teacher can share with peers in the school. 

So, while the degree itself is not everything required, the right advanced degree certainly enhances the school district staff.  But as I mentioned in earlier posts, I think that performance driven incentives make the most sense and will help produce an avalanche of positive results — if the incentives are properly structured and the results adequately stated and measured.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2008 at 10:25 am and is filed under For Educators, For Parents, For Students. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.