Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics - IEA

PART 1: TEACHER RELATIVE PAY AND STUDENT PERFORMANCE
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Whatever the explanation, higher relative teacher salaries are associated with higher test
scores, even when we control for other important factors associated with those higher
test scores. Because our sample of countries was small, more work is needed to test
whether this is a policy variable or just an indicator of something else that explains high
test scores and that correlates with the ratio of teacher salaries relative to the salaries of
other professions.
An additional caveat is that raising teacher salaries across the board (for all teachers
in the teacher labor force) in those countries with relatively low teacher salaries is an
expensive policy option. A much cheaper option is to raise the salaries only of starting
teachers or only of teachers with skills in short supply, such as mathematics and science.
However, these alternatives may face opposition from teachers’ unions. And, as we have
mentioned, any salary-increase policy involves many unknowns, such as the response
rate of higher ability individuals to higher salaries in teaching. A number of analysts
have argued that more spending per student on education does not produce higher
student test scores (see, for example, Hanushek et al., 1994). Although the empirical
foundations of this argument are highly problematic (see, for example, Rothstein &
Miles, 1995), there is enough of a case against simply raising teacher salaries as a policy
tool in order to improve schooling outcomes to create considerable political resistance
to it.
Nevertheless, the underlying notion that societies that seriously want to improve their
students’ performance in school must improve the quality of teachers in schools is also
compelling. It is difficult to determine how that improvement could be made other than
to raise the bar that indicates the level of skills individuals must have to enter teaching.
But if the bar is raised, it is also difficult to conceive of a means of attracting individuals
into teaching with those high skills other than that of making teacher remuneration
competitive with the remuneration offered in other professions requiring a similar level
of academic skills.
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