“Best practice”, right? Not in the opinion of this Consultant who has seen firsthand the damage that these two practices can bring about for schools, heads and boards.

1. Is One More “Fair” than the Other?

Approximately 50% of all US independent/private schools have no published salary system. Entry level salaries are based on what the school pays current teachers of similar experience, or whatever the market demands, or whatever it takes to hire from an increasingly limited pool of teachers especially in the math, science, computer, STEAM disciplines.

Then annual increases each year are a percentage that the board determines. The head usually has a pool of funds to give a higher percentage increase to those deemed meritorious according to some criteria that only the head knows, to those who advocate for themselves, or to those who might leave. Almost no one receives a percentage increase below the one that is announced.

A discretionary or a non-published salary system has some advantages and several disadvantages, but those disadvantages provide school leadership with a unique opportunity. This “non-system” has the advantage of NOT being published. The administration has the flexibility to hire competitively from the marketplace, and by using benchmarks to other area independent schools’ salaries (if available), the outcome may be reasonable.

In these schools, no one except the head and the CFO really knows how salaries are determined. Unfortunately, rumors do swirl, and teachers do talk even in cultures where that kind of gossip is discouraged.

However, schools with no formal “systems” DO have a system of sorts. Often in these settings, special deals are made over time and from one head to the next, the sense of equity and transparency is lost over the years.  Newly arrived heads cannot figure out how

individual teachers came to receive the salaries they are now earning. And there is often no

substantive evaluation/documentation trail in the files to indicate any differentiation of talent from one teacher to another. Some salaries seem too high. Others seem too low. But underneath there is still a “system” even if it is informal and has become somewhat corrupted over time.

Not all such “non-systems” systems are dysfunctional. Some are logical, but it takes administrators and the faculty a while to figure out the pattern. One example is a junior boys’ boarding school in the eastern US with no published salary scale. The School had no endowment and had a tight budget. It recruited graduates fresh out of the Ivies, and it served as a training ground for teachers who might later go to better known boarding schools. The teachers, mostly male, enjoyed the outdoors, the sports, and the opportunity to teach, coach, advise and supervise the dorm. Most stayed only three years and then moved on because the salary was low.

At this School, the workload was teaching four classes, coaching three sports per year, and supervising the dorm three nights per week and every other weekend. This was a moderately heavy load, and when there was no town nearby and not much to do during one’s off time. However, the Head had a “system” of sorts to keep the “rising stars”. For a new three-year contract, he offered: three classes, one sport, two nights of dorm supervision per week and only one weekend of dorm duty per month. Plus, he offered an administrative stipend of $10,000 and title to add to the individual’s CV. These incentives generally kept the most valued teachers another three years before they moved on where they often arrived as newly minted department chairs.

A published lock step system is a grid with years of experience on the “tracks” and advanced degrees/credits on the “lanes”.  It mainly serves tax supported public school districts. This is an easily understood, seemingly transparent model, but it is not mission based, i.e., unique to the school and reflective of the type of teacher that a school wishes to attract, retain, and reward.

The public-school grid, dominant in the international world and in Canada, is ostensibly fair.  Its inherent unfairness is not evident to the naked eye. Individually negotiated deals occur behind the scenes and under the table either to entice new hires, or to retain valued ones, or to respond to those who try to maneuver around the scale or negotiate through the addition of stipends.  Individual negotiation is based upon how needed and assertive the teacher is and how strong their prospects are to go elsewhere. Heads must react to those pressures. The outcomes often undercut faculty morale and a sense of fair play or an even playing field. Eventually nearly everyone wants a stipend(s) to earn more money.

Worldwide, Littleford & Associates has worked with schools that give titles and pay stipends to 75 to 90 percent of the teaching faculty and where a reduced course load AND a stipend combined are worth 30 to 35 percent of a teacher’s salary.  This is a significant cost to a school, and most do not calculate it. The proliferation of titles does not significantly improve a school’s program or culture.

1. The Good News and the Opportunity

Published systems make it more challenging for the Board and leadership to design a truly mission based, flexible, financially sustainable salary system that will signal to teachers the kind of employees the school wishes to hire and the kind it wishes not to hire.

Why is this more of a challenge? Many teachers like published salary systems because they are predictable. Teachers crave predictability of earning power even though they may be naïve about how those systems work in practice.

Mission based salary and benefit systems have a better chance of taking root and truly supporting the school’s unique mission when the slate is clean or at least less rigid than the public school grid model.

Boards are surprised to learn that even some reputedly great schools have no mission-based salary system but one that is only a remnant of prior eras or teacher groups whose interests dominated at the time.  Sometimes, it might have been the senior teachers and/or the mid-career teachers who had fallen behind and at other times it may have been the younger teachers who were crucial to retain in a competitive marketplace.

The bottom line: if you are one of those independent schools where there is no published, rigid, salary grid approach to teacher compensation, your school has a very strong prospect of succeeding in designing a truly mission based system that will enhance the ability to attract and retain teachers who value the school’s own stated values. And the benefit systems will fall into place. Still, it is up to the head of school to recognize the opportunity and act on it.

The answer is a salary system that provides both for a modicum of predictability in one’s future earning power and the ability to influence one’s own future earning power through published criteria that are known and seen to be fair and evenly implemented. There are many such systems that do work. We have seen hundreds over the years. They may be called bands, ladders, ranges or in some newer terminology, “circles.” But they are all very similar in the attempt to be more mission driven in how the school spends 60 to 85% of its budget.

The key to designing these systems is collaboration between the administration, teachers, and the board. Yes, the board. Boards have fiscal oversight as one of their three jobs. They do not need to know what an individual teacher is paid but board members should know the salary system, its dynamics, and how it functions to meet the mission. They have a right to know if the benefits package makes sense strategically and in terms of flexibility, taxing impact, and teacher choice, and does the benefit plan fit the mission and vice versa.

Such collaboration requires guidelines, safety protocols and wisdom. But the outcomes can be amazing.  There is a choice. School leadership can collaborate to create a mission-based salary system, or they can undermine it, or they can create a “muddle.”

Littleford & Associates has worked with over 2000 schools over the years in helping them design mission-based salary systems. Each outcome is unique to the mission of that school, but certain common outcomes shine through an increase in faculty morale; a greater appreciation by the board of teachers; a greater appreciation of teachers by the board; systems with greater transparency; and systems that are fair, yet fiscally responsible, flexible and market sensitive.  Finally, the political capital of the head of school tends to increase as teachers, administrators and board members all see innovative and creative leadership that trusted collaboration among these three groups. And sometimes a unique and surprising additional outcome occurs: greater generosity by board members in their commitment to higher teacher salaries and greater personal generosity by individual board members to the school to help support the outcome of this process.