Haile Takes on Teacher Pay, Calls for Education Experiments

In a recent, wide-ranging interview on Portland's WQKR radio, state Senator Ferrell Haile endorsed a new state pay scale for teachers that lowers the current range and replaces it with a new range, with a top mandated salary of $41,000 a year for a teacher with 11 or more years of experience and an advanced degree. 

Haile said the newly adopted state pay scale would be good for teachers because the good ones will end up making more money.

Local School Boards are free to adopt their own scale, but must include some form of salary differentiation among teachers and are encouraged to adopt a form of merit pay -- in spite of a number of studies showing performance pay for teachers doesn't work.

In the interview, Haile also noted that Tennessee needed to try more experiments with education because "what we're doing is not working."  What Haile failed to mention is that Tennessee has one of the lowest investments in public schools in the country -- and a correspondingly low set of results on national indicators of student achievement. 

Haile failed to commit to supporting new investments in schools and teachers.  However, in the 2013 legislative session, he was supportive of legislation that would create vouchers for certain students -- likely taking tax dollars from Sumner County and diverting them to other districts.  Alternatively, if a statewide voucher plan is passed (Haile does not oppose this), Sumner County Schools could see a loss of revenue of $2 million or more each year with no corresponding drop in expenses. 

Haile, elected in 2012, next faces voters in 2016.