Teacher Shortage and Strategic Compensation: Jon Eckert

Jon and I have had prior conversations on Collective Leadership, and I’ve become more convinced that building the professional and leadership capacity of educators within our schools and profession who enjoy doing hard and innovative work together is the primary way to improve our schools, educational opportunities for students, and the enjoyment of our work. I recently wrote a bit about this in a blog entitled, Building Engaged Schools: Educators Crave It! where I argue for a rebuilding of our profession from within schools.

I’ve become more convinced of this necessity as Jon has written a final piece for the Center for Teaching Quality on the Teacher Shortage. His blog and the series will provide a fair understanding of the complexity of the problem, Teacher Shortage Reality: Numbers and Names.

This is why as you listen to the podcast I ask Jon about Collective Leadership and Strategic Compensation as they are intertwined in his research, expertise, and work with schools. I his first book he states,

Educators spend too much time down in the weeds worrying: Who is a leader? Who is not a leader? Is a leader defined by a position? Many times these conversations are driven by contracts and collective bargaining language that separates teachers and administrators. These can be important questions, but they are not the questions that will actually improve education. One of the primary attributes of great schools leaders—both administrators and teachers—is the fact that they don’t define, they do.

They get things done.

Therefore, I asked Jon two questions about Collective Leadership and the connection with Strategic Compensation:

1. In your research what are seeing that supports this comment, and how are you helping school leaders re-think how they build their faculties and even how we think about the Education profession?
2. I talk with a lot of people who want to solve the teacher shortage or low quality faculties by creating fancy salary structures. What are you learning about Strategic Compensation as you work with districts and schools as they seek to create high quality faculties?

Jon's Bio:

As a Professor of Education at Wheaton College, Jon’s research includes teaching effectiveness, teacher preparation, teacher evaluation, and teacher compensation. In addition to his work at Wheaton he is a Research Consultant for the Center for Teaching Quality and he has also consulted with the National Institute for Excellence in Teaching and the U.S. Department of Education. You can find his recent research on Collective Leadership in his new book, “Leading Together: Teachers and Administrators Improving Student Outcomes.”