“Aside from substantially increasing salaries, what can schools do to attract and retain really great teachers?”
It’s an interesting question, posed by Eduwonk, and certainly the answer’s been the goal of NYC for a long time. While various NY mayors pondered this great mystery, its school system went from one of the world’s very best to what it's been for the past thirty years or so. The city has tried 800 numbers, ads on buses and subway trains, recruiting from foreign countries, including Spain, Austria, and Jamaica, job fairs, and notoriously lowering the standards held by the rest of the state.
Perhaps the highly diminished status and quality of the school system is mere coincidence. Perhaps it just happened to be one of the best when it paid the most, and it just happens to be what it is now by chance, having no relationship whatsoever to the fact it pays the lowest wages in the area.
In any case, there are a few questions I’d like the answer to before I respond. First, aside from making rent or mortgage payments, how can teachers avoid living in the park? Aside from buying gas, how can we get our cars to reach their destinations? Aside from handing money to various cashiers, how can we acquire things to satisfy our capricious desires (food, clothing, medicine, and so forth)? Well, you get the idea.
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