Posted on 11/01/2011 9:11:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Education Secretary Arne Duncan thinks public-school teachers are “desperately underpaid” and has called for doubling teacher salaries. In a new paper co-authored with Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation, I look into whether teachers really are desperately underpaid, or underpaid at all. Jason and I find that the conventional wisdom is far off the truth.
At first glance, public-school teachers definitely look underpaid. According to Census data, teachers receive salaries around 20 percent lower than similarly educated private-sector workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says teachers’ benefits are about the same as benefits in the private sector. But both the salary and benefits figures are dubious.
Most teachers have Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees in education, and most people with education degrees are teachers. Decades of research has shown that education is a less rigorous course of study than other majors: Teachers enter college with below-average SAT scores but receive much higher GPAs than other students. It may be that a degree in education simply does not reflect the same underlying skills and knowledge as a degree in, say, history or chemistry. When we compare salaries based on objective measures of cognitive ability — such as SAT, GRE, or IQ scores — the teacher salary penalty disappears.
And the real world bears this out: Contrary to teachers’ insistences that they could earn more outside of teaching, we show that the typical worker who moves from the private sector into teaching receives a salary increase, while the typical teacher who leaves for the private sector receives a pay cut.
If salaries are about even, benefits push teacher pay ahead. The BLS benefits data, which most pay studies rely on, has three shortcomings: It omits the value of retiree health coverage, which is uncommon for private workers but is worth about an extra 10 percent of pay for teachers; it understates the value of teachers’ defined-benefit pensions, which pay benefits several times higher than the typical private 401(k) plan; and it ignores teachers’ time off outside the normal school year, meaning that long summer vacations aren’t counted as a benefit. When we fix these problems, teacher benefits are worth about double the average private-sector level.
Finally, public-school teachers have much greater job security, with unemployment rates about half those of private-school teachers or other comparable private occupations. Job security protects against loss of income during unemployment and, even more importantly, protects a position in which benefits are much more generous than private-sector levels.
Overall, we estimate that public-school teachers receive total compensation roughly 50 percent higher than they would likely receive in the private sector. Does this mean that all school teachers are overpaid? No. But it does mean that across-the-board pay increases are hardly warranted. What is needed is pay flexibility, to reward the best teachers and dismiss the worst.
— Andrew G. Biggs is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
Why you ask? Because the publishing companies make money off of selling new curriculum books. You can thank the publishing companies’ lobbying of state governments and congress for a huge part of the cost of public education.
You forgot to mention one important fact: those who operate the schools, those who teach the teachers are usually persons who are by comparison with their old schoolmates and peers in the colleges and university, not well-educated. Probably 70% of the school administrators in Texas are former coaches, and while I think that most of them have more native intelligence and common sense than many who have taught academic courses, that means our schools are run by people who know little or art, literature, math and science. They are easily sold a bill of good by the peddlers of the latest educational fads. You know that a common joke among teachers is that the “reformers” keep rebranding ideas that have beeb tried and failed. School administration is a kind of appointive politics, and even the largest of school systems are run by people who have run out of new ideas.
Yes, I thought about that issue. But, it doesn't apply here. Your position was to pay "TEACHERS" wages that day care providers are paid, not to turn teachers into day care providers. Since there is no regulations regarding the number of students that a teacher has in a classroom, this is a non-issue with respect to this hypothetical.
As to the last part of your "questions", you seem to have failed to realize what you're asking. The original statement of yours was to pay individual teachers the wages that are paid to day care providers. Since that was the only issue raised, there was no need to go into the logistics of such issues as meal preparation (schools already have the equipment), ADA accessibility (schools already comply with ADA), fire protections (schools already have that built in to the facilities), etc, etc, etc. Again, this was not a question of making teachers leave their position in order to become simply a day care provider for children, but, as you indicated, changing the pay scale for teachers to match that of day care providers. You defined the operational rules in your original post.
While I can't speak to how decisions are made in the various states and counties with respect to selection of curriculum, I can state emphatically that principals in the districts I have worked in DO NOT select curriculum materials. That is done at the district office level by a curriculum committe, and then the final say goes through the elected school board. Classroom teachers and principals are rarely even asked for their input.
[ State control and “local” control is **still** government! ]
Some States are totally socialistic States.. like New York (Conn/Mass)..
They can do whatever they want to do.. as a State..
Other States are not totally socialist..
Let’s see which ones do well... first the federal gov’t must be “gutted”..
I have a Master of Arts degree in Psychology. I took required courses in Statistics for both my undergraduate and graduate degrees (six courses in all that involved Statistics). I passed all but one of those classes with an A (the other was a B. I missed an A by just a few points). I use Statistics in my profession daily. My son-in-law is in IT. He not only works on the hardware, but he writes software. He took required mathematics courses, and passed them all with high grades. Neither one of us were able to make heads or tails of the math homework from the new curriculum. I do not believe it is because WE are incompetent. I have talked with other teachers at varying grade levels who were also extremely disappointed in the new curriculum they were forced to use, and were having a hard time understanding. The problem isn't the competence of the teachers, but of the individuals who wrote the text books.
Principals are underlings. By school administrators I mean first of all the superintendents. Most receive at least four times the salary of the top-most teacher. Then we have the bureaucrats at the state level. You may not have studied the matter, but federal aid for the schools really changed the situation. I last taught in Texas in 1965. At the school where I taught there was one superintendent. Now—the same size district—there are three, each earning more(even adjusting for inflation) more than the one did in 1965. More and more money is pumped into the systems with less and less result. So much of it is soaked up by what Bill Bennet once called “the Blob,”
Not from any objective measure. As I said, aside from the ones in crappy school districts, there is not much turnover in public education. Tenure is very common, salaries are high, job security is unmatched, and, as a result, people that start out in teaching stay in teaching. My view is congruent with the findings of the study. Your view, where teaching is this rough, transient career, does not match the study's findings.
SoldierDad, I understand your issue well. My wife is a teacher and you are right, the Administration is completely out of touch with the teachers and in no hurry to create a system that in their minds may endanger the cushy spot in the pecking order they occupy.
We need to find what works and stick with it, whole language instruction is a joke and the root of most reading problems but it is in widespread use today even though the results are abysmal.
In the Corporate world I had more control and paid for performance and the curriculum my group provided was measured consistently for outcome and not changed randomly with each new “thing” that came along.
Do you remember the “New Math” of the ‘60s. Many older teachers had a rough time with it, because Those who wrote the new materials failed to understands what it was all about. Thus the elementary fact that “arithmatic” is something that needs to be taught without regard to the jargon of set theory. That it has more to do with number theory. Now set theory is no more than what not long before was called the theory of aggregates. The reforms aimed basically to restate math analysis in terms of set theory, but the reform got lost in the thicket, and the publishers of school materials hustled to “sell” their stuff to the schools as the old stuff was dumped unceremoniously. The result was mass confusion among parents, teachers and of course journalists —who by and large are men/women of little, education. And the kids. Kids went form grades one to six learning nothing but jargon and about as much real math as a bright second grader can learn in six months. Total mess.
You say you have an MA in psychology”suffice to say that the pedagogy attending the introduction of the new math must have made Piaget roll over in his grave.
Honestly....Do they teach and form of rational thinking in education colleges?
You are comparing a single government teacher of 30 students ( $3.00/hour/child) to a day care worker who is forbidden by law to have that many. If the day care worker does have 30 children then there are very **significant** expenses ( employee wages, building and rental expenses, health and safety requirements, and handicap expenses such as very expensive ramps and bathrooms) that come out **directly** out of the fees paid to her by the parents.
You aren't comparing apples to oranges. You are comparing apples with a Boeing 747!
Honestly.... I absolutely believe that **all** government teachers should be required to take ( at minimum) the first semester of Calculus for engineering and science majors. They should be required to sit side by side with these science and engineering majors and take the very **same** classes. It might help with the faulty reasoning seen in your post.
I would suggest that education majors take Calculus I, II, and III, and differential equations but few would graduate.
No, states can not do “whatever” they want. States can NOT violate First Amendment Rights.
And...ALL government schools in every state of this nation violate the First Amendment! They violate **all** of the First Amendment protections: speech, press, free assembly, free expression of religion, and **especially** establishment of religion.
No government school in this nation is religiously neutral. NOT even ONE!
Why? Answer: Because no government school can be religiously neutral because a religiously neutral education is impossible! No child should be forced into a government school. No taxpayer should be forced to pay for it, even if the district was the size of 150 houses.
A sentiment shared by FDR, or at least as regards unions with the usual accoutrements of collective bargaining and a right to strike. (And, I would note, forbidding mere associations of public employees which might petition for a redress of grievances would be hard to square with the natural rights the Constitution was established to protect.)
That sounds insane. We aren’t talking about String Theory or Matrix manipulation - we are talking about 6th grade math. This stuff is either fairly basic Algebra - or multiplying 3 digit numbers and moving a decimal point around.
I fail to see how you can baffle an educated adult, with math presented at the 6th grade level. I just can’t imagine how one could take something so elementry, and make it difficult.
A train leaves New York at 8am going 64 mph towards Omaha, Nebraska. At the same time, a train from Omaha leaves on a parallel set of tracks to New York travelling at 58mph. How many Zebras are seated the 2nd passenger car on the train heading to Omaha?
They also get to retire after 25-30 years of work. With a pension. What private worker get to do that???? My sister will be retiring at age 52. I a physician will have to work to age 70 to support my retirement.
[ A sentiment shared by FDR, ]
FDR was as progressive as he wanted to be.. yet he was still a progressive..
The progressives pretty much RAN the United States for many years...
Even after FDR died they ran it... they run the US NOW...
Perry and Romney are progressives NOW.. but not as progressive as most democrats..
Its the degree of your progressiveness thats the problem.
Even a mildly progressive citizen is still progressive..
And after all that there are types of progressives..
The secret word of progressives is “democracy”... they worship democracy..
Its a “Holy” word to them..
Democracy was, is now, and will be forever, Mob Rule by Mobsters..
Thats why the US is a republic and NOT a democracy..
You present a picture of people going to work for a school district and then staying there. That certainly does not happen. Many women come in and out of teaching, because the job lends itself to that. What you say is certainly not true of the several districts in my area, which is a very large suburban area. One thing that is a big factor is the parochialism of teachers. The great majority end up teaching within 100 miles of where they grew up. Another thing is that this is a female occupation. Can’t beat it as a second income. This also renders the group as a whole pretty passive and disinclined to move. The average household income in which a member is a teacher is considerable above median pay. So I am saying that this supposed pool of possible teachers is relatively small.
Another point: it doesn’t matter if you privatize the K-12 schools, so long as the states require credentials from a college of education as a license to teach in them, private or public, we’ll still have the same ed majors, miseducated on Dewey’s ideas or the more baleful enthusiasms that followed in Dewey’s wake like Vygotsky’s “social construction of knowledge” or the absurd notion that students’ “self-esteem” is more important than learning, with barely a grasp of the real content they are supposed to be teaching.
The most important reform is to break the monopoly given to colleges of education to produce “qualified” teachers. Without that, even privatization is just tinkering around the edges.
I’m mystified by your complaints. What curriculum are your schools using? Is it the fault of the curriculum or the teacher misusing the curriculum? Can you give a sample of the incoherent problems they’re sending home?
I’m a mathematician, and have an interest in the K-12 schools not mathematically abusing children either with drill-and-kill that might get them to do arithmetic decently, but will make them hate math, or with the fluff that math ed types in colleges of education have been foisting on us of late, which leaves them innumerate (and usually even more math-phobic).
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