In addition to finding my writing less than fully felicitous (dude--that's cold) Leo seems to think we disagree about the impact of teacher experience on effectiveness in the classroom. We don't. Leo is exactly right when he says:
...the learning curve in teaching is very steep at the start of a teaching career, when the novice is mastering the fundamental skills, and levels off after that initial 3 to 5 year period. From the viewpoint of mastery of the teaching craft, therefore, it makes sense to say that there is little difference between a 10 year and a 20 year teacher. But whether a teacher has 10, 15, 20 or 25 years of experience, what never disappears is the crucial differential between a novice teacher and an experienced teacher. An accurate description of the research would be that the gap between the skills of the novice teachers and the skills of more experienced teachers grows significantly through five years of experience, and thereafter levels off.
We agree; this is what research, common sense, and personal observation tell us. However, Leo is leaving out an important qualifier here, one that makes all the difference in discussions of teacher compensation. He's describing the typical trajectory of individual teachers. In other words, any given teacher is nearly always significantly better in Year 5 than he or she was in Year 1 (and not much better in Year 25 than Year 15). But that does not mean that all Year 5 teachers are the same. In fact, some teachers are pretty great from the beginning, and improve to become spectacular. Other teachers struggle mightily in Year 1, and while they may improve, they never become very good. The differences can be huge.
As a result, some novice teachers are better than other veteran teachers, making up for lack of experience with talent, dedication, training, and hard work. For what I suspect is a good example of such a teacher, just scroll down three posts on Edwize itself, to this post, titled "Are My Students Suffering Because I'm a Novice Teacher?" I don't know the answer for sure, but if I had to guess, I'd bet they're not. That doesn't mean this teacher won't get better, of course she will. But judging from this post, she's probably doing pretty well by her students already:
I have even admitted to family, friends and most importantly myself that I feel like this is my true calling. I enjoy the kids, I love sharing information, and this career allows me to be myself. In fact, my personality has been vital in forming a good rapport with my students and earning their respect. Still I can’t help but to feel guilty because I realize they are like my first-year “guinea pigs”; they are getting their education from someone who is focused and intelligent but not seasoned. I am an excellent writer, fast learner and able to relate to my students, all good qualities that work in my favor as a teacher. The students have admitted many times during class that they feel like they do “real work” and are “really learning something” in my class, which sounds great coming from those who, in my mind, matter most (the students). I reflect often on the things my students have said to me such as, “Miss, I like that you are always fair” and “I remembered what you taught me when I took my exam.”
Resources are finite. If we tie up large amounts of money in mandatory experience-based salary increases in order to retain all experienced teachers, as opposed to only good experienced teachers, then we have less money available to recruit and retain good novice teachers. Increasing salaries for effective younger teachers in this way would decrease the high turnover that Leo is rightly concerned about, and increase the odds that when those young teachers learn from veterans, they learn something worth knowing.
Leo might say there's no way to fairly determine who's "good," and "effective," but I've always found that argument to be singularly unpersuasive. After all, he himself tells us that he's "visited scores of high schools through the years," and has observed the benefits of experience first-hand. I assume he doesn't just infer that experience leads to effectiveness, but that he has instead observed effectiveness independently, as a distinct quality. If Leo can accurately observe large differences in teacher quality in his visits, why do we assume that the principal who works there full time can't do the same, particularly if they supplement those judgments with student achievement data? Clearly, there are examples of principals who aren't up to this task, either as a matter of competence or integrity, but that's an argument for getting better principals, not for an absolute refusal to base individual teacher pay on how well individual teachers do their jobs.
At the bottom of his post, Leo swerves into the standardized attack on standardized tests. Look--nobody thinks standardized tests provide perfect information, or even close to perfect information. But the grown-up question here is obvious: what level of imperfection can we tolerate, given the way the information will be used? (See Sherman Dorn for comment on this issue.) Leo clearly thinks that our current tests fall below that threshold. Okay, I'll bite: how good does student assessment information--from standardized tests or any other source--have to be before it would be appropriate for use in determining teacher salaries? 100% perfect and unassailable in every way? If not perfect, how good? 95%? Let's put a number on the table and then figure out what it would take to get there.
Unless, of course, not getting there is the point.
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