It's hard to measure the effect a teacher has on a young mind. What's that impact worth, and how do we reward it?

In Arlington, public-education accolades continue, with high MCAS scores, national recognition for Stratton and kudos for the high school. But those behind that success are teachers -- and they say they have been shortchanged for years. It is among issues involved as mediation over the stalled teachers' contract began Tuesday, Sept. 28.

The numbers tell the story: A teacher with a bachelor's degree makes an average minimum of $39,336. That's 13th out 17 districts from a list used for comparison by the town manager in contract talks and employing the most recent salary data. The top minimum among the districts compared is Randolph at $46,300.

Arlington teachers with a master's degree top out at $69,540, also ranking 13th. Belmont is first at $86,035.

By the numbers -- how Arlington compares:

Bennett, Christian Science Monitor

Data about teacher pay and MCAS scores are expressed in a series of online charts. Click the links and run your cursor over each bar to see the district and the number. Most contracts reflect the most recent available data. Most numbers are from contracts ending in 2009, some in 2010, some in 2008. The pay for master's degree maximum is, in most cases, for 15 credits beyond that degree. Pay can be higher with more credits or a PhD. Matt Carroll of The Boston Globe helped with these charts.

BA degree minimum pay in communities compared to Arlington's

MA degree maximum pay in communities compared to Arlington's

How MCAS rank in selected communities compare to Arlington's

The differences in annual pay reflect a number of factors in Arlington, chief among them Proposition 2 1/2, which was implemented in 1981. Since then, year after year, not enough money remains in town and school finances to pay teachers in ways that they feel valued, according to teachers who would agree to speak on background only. 

A union source said Arlington teachers accepted contracts with no pay increases in 1984 and 1994 and have worked with no raise for the past two years.

Nevertheless, Arlington teachers continue their mission, and students continue to rank high on standardized tests. 

One kind of result: student test scores statewide

The Massachusetts Comprehensive Achievement System, much criticized for putting teacher creativity into a straitjacket, offers a rough tool to assess learning.

The most recent scores rank Arlington fourth among 20 comparable communities. The town's composite score trails Winchester, Lexington and Belmont, but Arlington is ahead of Needham, Wellesley and Brookline.

With relatively high student test scores and relatively depressed pay, teachers in Arlington begin the 2010-11 school year facing still other challenges -- a testy atmosphere of distrust and tougher working conditions.

To try to address the atmosphere, the union that has been negotiating for them, the Arlington Education Association, had Paul Toner, president of the Mass. Teachers Association, speak to the School Committee on Sept. 14.

The teachers' feeling they are "under attack," as Toner put it, stems in part from the slow-to-recover national economy, which filters to the state and local levels, and the lack of progress over two years of contract talks.

The salary numbers in charts with this story reflect what any teacher at these levels will make at the start of this school year. Some districts among those listed are getting 3 percent raises this year (some less, some more). Some, as occurred in Arlington last year and so far this year, none.

Comments from officials, state and local

Glenn Koocher, Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MASC), does not know the specifics about contracts talks in Arlington, which bear on teacher pay, but he addressed the general situation statewide, in an e-mail Sept. 26:

"Many school committees are very concerned about FY 2012, when stimulus money is exhausted, the sales tax revenue may be cut, and state revenues are unlikely to come back.

"As a result, they're being very conservative with raises and that includes holding on to the federal jobs bill money to protect people's jobs in 2011-12.

"Many school committees would rather save more positions than give more raises to current staff and lose positions in the process.

"As a result, we've got an elevated level of labor strife and acute angst about balancing our budgets for next year."

Koocher also spoke to how he sees the public's reaction: "We also sense that the public is not favorably disposed to pay raises once they understand that it will mean the loss of positions."

That applied in Arlington last May and June, when the public sent in a flood of donations via the Bridge the Gap campaign, whose aim was to save positions. The total came to $597,682. 

Curro offers questions

Joseph Curro Jr., chairman of the School Committee and leader of the committee's negotiating team, was asked whether he could speak broadly about why teacher pay remains relatively low. On Sept. 27, he declined to comment directly on the question. Instead, he posed some questions voicing his own frustration: "Why does the money appear to run out for education in our society? Why does it take a back seat to war and Wall Street?

"Why does the economy -- which has supposedly pulled out of recession -- plod along at a sluggish pace? Why has the state pulled back over the years on its commitments?

"Why do we not see a full embrace of an adequacy study by the Commonwealth that will look at what communities need to fully fund the education of our children -- followed up by full funding of such a study's findings?

"Why do the state and federal governments saddle local communities with more and more unfunded mandates? Why are local communities not provided with more flexibility to tackle structural cost issues like health insurance inflation?

"Why is the education of our neediest students not assumed as a shared societal commitment and a mission that speaks to the intersection of learning and physical, mental, and emotional health?  

"Why do we not have broad-based progressive taxation? Why are communities like Arlington -- very little commercial tax base, very little room to grow our way out of financial stress, too rich to qualify for significant aid, too poor to make it on our own -- forced to rely on unpredictable and relatively regressive property tax overrides  and fee increases to stay afloat?

"I think that the answers to the above questions will help to answer your original query."

Tosti, Sullivan cite lack of room to grow

Asked for the reasons he sees behind the town's inability to pay teachers more, Allan Tosti, chairman of the Finance Committee, wrote Sept. 26:

"One would have to do a careful budget comparison to get a definitive answer. 

"One reason would be the number of small elementary schools that we have. Fewer larger schools would save a great deal of money, but the town seems to prefer small neighborhood schools.

"A second reason is the fact that the town has less money to give its schools. Our overall financial capacity is less than our neighbors. We have less growth in our tax base because we are fully built out and have a very small business sector.

"On top of that, we have been severely hurt by the manner in which the state has reduced our local aid since 2003. We are now getting the same local aid that we did in 1987."

Town Manager Brian Sullivan commented Sept. 27 in part by referring to his 2011 financial plan. Page 8 of the 192-page PDF document, which is here, shows that "we are dead last in new growth in our tax base and close to the bottom in terms of the Municipal Revenue Growth Factor (a broader measure of revenue growth).

"This says we are least able to raise revenue for our budgets and for pay raises, or in other words, we are least able to pay.

Generally, an organization's pay scale is related to its ability to pay. Here it appears that we are paying above our ability, but unfortunately it is still lower than a number of communities who experience more revenue growth than Arlington."

No on-the-record comment from the union

Comment for this story was requested from Ron Colosi Jr., AEA president, as well as a number of teachers. Either there was no response, or each declined to comment. One who responded feared reprisals.

At the same time, the September edition of The Reflector, AEA's publication, reports progress in talks about healthcare with the town. See the online .PDF version here >>

One teacher who spoke only if a name were not used said in June that 148 students were expected in class in the fall. The teacher said the AEA contract allows 125.

Asked for an update this month, the teacher said more than 160 students were in classes.

"To make the cuts" required this spring under the limits of the fiscal 2011 budget, the teacher said, Arlington High School Principal Charles Skidmore "had some awful choices to make. He worked so hard to keep classroom teachers.

"For as long as we have had the house system, each house has had a secretary. We went to house system to help make a school within a school. Kids were in the same house for four years.

"Both dean and secretary got to know the kids very well. Secretary and house office was a home base for the kids. There was no choice, really. We had to keep classroom teachers. So the secretaries were cut. The room is sterile. Kids no longer have that connection. It was always a happy interesting place. No more."