Teachers' price

Guilford County has taken the plunge of paying teachers more to teach tough subjects and in tough schools. Now, let's assess

Like nearly every other state, North Carolina has major challenges attracting the most effective teachers to the neediest schools, as well as finding a critical mass of good math teachers. An experiment in Guilford County seeks to attack those challenges head on, by paying certain teachers a premium. If that solution seems mercenary to some, that's unfortunate. The future of thousands of North Carolina youngsters hang in the balance, and this is a perfectly reasonable attempt to address a well-known problem.

Higher pay is rarely at the top of the list when teachers are given satisfaction surveys, but that's more a testament to the laudable passion many teachers bring to the classroom. Still, salary is a powerful motivator. And it is a barometer of the value society places on a profession.

In the Guilford experiment, beginning teachers can make about $2,500 more per year -- to $35,087 -- for teaching in high-poverty elementary and middle schools or for teaching ninth-grade English. They can earn a third more than a normal starting teacher for teaching math in predominantly poor middle and high schools, up to $41,587.

In addition, performance bonuses are given to teachers whose students make significant progress by year's end. Salaries can climb higher than $70,000 for teaching at one of the 22 schools that are part of the experiment (the Guilford district has 116 schools).

Across North Carolina, success at funneling good teachers to hard-pressed schools has been spotty at best. But in Guilford, all the positions eligible for extra pay have been filled, with fully qualified teachers. That is bound to benefit youngster in urban and poor areas, which traditionally have employed a disproportionate number of teachers unqualified in their fields.

Those schools also suffer high turnover, so much so that some classrooms have multiple teachers from the start to the finish of a school year. Such stutter-step instruction can doom a class to dismal achievement that is especially damaging in the lower grades. Higher pay could result in more stable teaching staffs.

It is encouraging that the 16-campus University of North Carolina system has helped expand the Guilford program. The state's public universities ought to be in the forefront of helping to solve the desperate problems faced by public education.

Decent pay for teachers doesn't guarantees academic progress. Orderly classrooms also are a must. Parents need to pick up the teaching baton at home, or their youngsters won't receive the full benefits of even master teachers.

North Carolina also needs principals who know how to hire qualified teachers and to motivate them effectively. In that respect, better training and continuing education is likely the key. The state Board of Education as well as the UNC system both need to address those problems, especially in light of new demands placed on public schools by the federal No Child Left Behind law.

The UNC system will help evaluate the effects of Guilford's approach. It makes sense that better pay for teachers will result in better-educated students, but a careful tracking of progress at the 22 schools should show whether the $2 million experiment actually works. That will be useful information not just for Guilford County residents and taxpayers, but to educators across the state and to legislators, who set the education agenda.