It is by now a familiar story, often told as a lament: teachers in United States continue to be paid according to the single salary schedule. They accrue better pay on the basis of years of experience and college units earned. Units may or may not be related to teaching assignment. Some districts have modestly tweaked this arrangement by paying a premium to teachers who earn certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. By and large, in thousands of school districts across the United States, the unvarnished standard single salary schedule prevails. In this article, the author states that the time has come for school districts and teacher unions to take a different tack. It is time to develop and implement a professional compensation arrangement that recognizes the complex nature of the work of teaching and that compensates teachers for both the difficulty of the assignment and the professional accomplishment that is part of it. They need a compensation structure that utilizes multiple approaches. These should include paying teachers more for: (1) attaining knowledge and skills that demonstrably contribute to improving student learning; (2) mentoring newer and less skilled teachers; (3) teaching in hard-to-staff schools and choosing difficult-to-staff subjects; and (4) producing higher test scores, using a value-added approach.