While we did not discuss differentiating pay by discipline, my school did
touch on some of the same issues when working in the mid-90's to develop a
system to determine Full Time Equivalency. One person suggested English
teachers should receive extra FTE credit based how much extra time they
spent correcting essays, and very quickly we found that teachers from
pretty much every discipline had reasons why they should receive extra FTE
credit: Science teachers "had to set up for labs," Art teachers "had to
put in a lot of extra time hanging shows" and so on. It was well on the
way to becoming horribly divisive when we simply decided that no
discipline would be favored over another, period. Oddly, and fortunately,
there was a positive legacy after everything settled out in that everyone
became more aware of how hard everyone else was working, I think because
we stopped going down that path before irreparable damage had been done.
I think a pay scale which is differentiated by discipline would be at
least that bad for morale, possibly worse. That said, there may be
specific individual cases where it makes sense to make an exception and
bump the salary up a bit.
Take care,
Bill Ivey
Stoneleigh-Burnham School
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