$125,000 Salaries for Teachers

A new charter school, The Equity Project (TEP), to open in Washington Heights this fall is offering $125,000 salaries fo its teachers. NY Times reports.

Teachers will take on extra responsibilities with regard to attendance, discipline, and after-school programming. The principal's salary will be $90,000. There will only be two social workers employed by the school.

I can't disagree about upping the teacher salary. I think it will be really interesting to see the ramifications of this and whether this is a sustainable model for a school.

A couple "challenges" that stood out to me:

• In addition to the "core" subject areas (not that I agree that they are the "cores"), the school will offer Latin as its only language and Music as the only arts course. Visual arts will be integrated into ESL and Social Studies. Not sure I agree with this. Though it looks like some after school programming could include exposure to other "electives."
• The school is only accepting teacher applicants who score in the 90th percentile on the GRE, GMAT, or LSAT. What is this saying?
• I don't see much about the educational philosophy on the website. What are the pedagogical beliefs? Yes, teacher quality is important. But how do you define that? High standardized test scores?