An educational experiment with higher salaries

A New York City charter school set to open in 2009 in Washington Heights will test one of the most fundamental questions in education: Whether significantly higher pay for teachers is the key to improving schools.

The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay teachers $125,000, plus a potential bonus based on schoolwide performance. That is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, roughly two and a half times the national average teacher salary and higher than the base salary of all but the most senior teachers in the most generous districts nationwide.

Here is the story, thanks to Kurt Muehmel for the pointer.  For many years I’ve been telling some of my Ph.d. students that they should consider teaching in private high schools.  None of them seem to listen but maybe this will have some impact.