Description
Children’s achievement and successful academic competence are directly correlated to teacher
quality and efficacy. American K-12 students’ reading and math scores, as well as international
competition results, have suggested that the education system is at risk. Although multiple
education reform models and laws have been enforced to improve the state of K-12 school
education, these results were not measurably successful. Furthermore, teacher shortage has
proved to be a chronic crisis, stemming from high attrition rates and decreased enrollment in
teacher preparation programs. This reveals the need to make the teaching profession more
attractive, in a way that can increase teacher proficiency and efficacy as a solution to improve
accountability for successful K-12 school education. Many studies have found that teacher pay is
not the primary reason of teacher attrition, but rather stems from a lack of administrative support
in conjunction with non-competitive compensation. Therefore, this preliminary study conducted
two new trials: A Performance-Based Compensation (PBC) Index was developed as a proposed
salary structure and the potential effectiveness was tested. The intended purpose of the PBC
Index is to both properly compensate highly proficient teachers and provide strong support to
struggling teachers to improve their own proficiency. Current teachers’ perceptions and
perspectives on this new model were evaluated and the implication of results were included in
this study.