How Much Are Teachers Paid?
Nick Gillespie | February 4, 2007, 4:14pm
A helluva lot, according to a new Manhattan Institute Study by Jay P. Greene and Marcus A. Winters. Among the findings, which are based on Bureau of Labor Statistics workplace surveys:
According to the BLS, the average public school teacher in the United States earned $34.06 per hour in 2005.
The average public school teacher was paid 36% more per hour than the average non-sales white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty and technical worker.
Full-time public school teachers work on average 36.5 hours per week during weeks that they are working. By comparison, white-collar workers (excluding sales) work 39.4 hours, and professional specialty and technical workers work 39.0 hours per week. Private school teachers work 38.3 hours per week.
Compared with public school teachers, editors and reporters earn 24% less; architects, 11% less; psychologists, 9% less; chemists, 5% less; mechanical engineers, 6% less; and economists, 1% less.
Compared with public school teachers, airplane pilots earn 186% more; physicians, 80% more; lawyers, 49% more; nuclear engineers, 17% more; actuaries, 9% more; and physicists, 3% more.
Public school teachers are paid 61% more per hour than private school teachers, on average nationwide.
The whole study is here. Note that the BLS is designed to capture all hours put in by workers, so the comparisons between teachers and other workers are apples to apples. Greene and Winters also find very little (read: no) correlation between how much teachers are paid and student performance.
For a Wall Street Journal op-ed version of the study, go here. There, the authors argue that
Evidence suggests that the way we pay teachers is more important than simply what they take home. Currently salaries are determined almost entirely by seniority--the number of years in the classroom--and the number of advanced degrees accumulated. Neither has much to do with student improvement.
There is evidence that providing bonuses to teachers who improve the performance of their students does raise academic proficiency.
Thanks to reader Willfox23 for the tip.
Lisa Snell looked at the massive potential of "weighted student funding" to revolutionize American education here. And I cast a cold eye on most merit-pay schemes here.
kevrob | February 4, 2007, 8:33pm | #
My Dad taught and coached for 33 years. When he started, (the 1940s) teaching was indeed a low-paying ptofession. But, for someone who grew up during the Depression, and had survived close to 4 years as a G.I. in the South Pacific, it had its benefits. Young people were often advised to "go into teaching or the Civil Service. You won't get rich, but the work is steady, the benefits are good, and your pension will be safe."
Unionization changed the equation. My father taught in one of the first states to embrace unionization of public employees, and consequently his salaries rose, due to improved contracts, increased seniority, and earning an M.A. He was also paid for some extra duties. Besides coaching, he eventually was made Athletic Director of his district. That latter job meant he worked for the District in the summer. He still had a heck of a lot more time off in the summer than my classmates' Dads, which made up for the afternoons, nights and weekends he put in with his teams on game and practice days.
When he was a young man with little experience he worked every summer. Sometimes that was teaching Summer School in his or a neighboring district. He worked for local recreation programs, doing everything from organizing activites for the kids to driving the big yellow bus. He umpired and refereed youth and adult sports when his coaching seasons ended. he scratched for every dollar.
Many of his colleagues did summer work, too, whether in seasonal businesses, or going full-time in something they did part-time during the school year. Selling insurance was a popular sideline, but not all summer jobs were so white collar. One of Dad's pals used to go clamming in the summers.
One thing that changed in those years was the labor force. When Dad started, teaching was a mostly female profession, and the married women in it were often secondary earners in their families. For the "teaching Moms," having the summer off was a major benefit. For 3 months they were like the other ladies on Apple Blossom Lane, kissing their husbands good-bye in the morning, taking care of their released-from-school children, and having a hot diner ready upon Pop's return. Every once in awhile, one of these teachers would quit, short of retirement, because her family could get by on one salary, and she'd rather be a full-time homemaker. That became less and less common, and the 2-earner marriage moreso. There was also the surge in divorce, leading to more female-headed families. Those certainly couldn't look on a teaching salary as "pin money." Getting better pay was a survival issue for them.
Once the unions organized the last resisting parts of the country, the folk wisdom that "teachers are underpaid" lingered. Now the contracts in areas where they have long had a foothold could be called lavish, especially when health insurance and pensions are accounted for. The private sector workforce has had the first of those eliminated or transformed into defined contribution plans, and we all know how employees have had to kick in more for health plans in recent years. In my state, the teachers don't have to pay penny one towards their health plan, which the districts buy from a division of the union! Even the city and county workers haven't pulled that off. The old "low pay/good benefits" tradeoof is now "good pay/great bennies."
When contemplating a career change, I have pondered whether I might like to get certified and follow in the "family business." (My grandmother taught, also.) I could only stomach working at private schools, which, certain elite ones aside, still follow their traditional "bad pay/lousy benefits" formula. On the plus side, private schools still allow some modicum of disciplne, so I might survive the experience. When I looked into what junk you have to sit through in order to get that certificate, I let go of the notion.
Kevin
Todd | February 5, 2007, 10:23am | #
I am a lawyer, and my brother-in-law and two of my best friends are high school teachers. We have had numerous discussions about this topic and all agree that there is a trade-off, but in the end we all get basically the same pay for what we do.
1) As far as hours worked "off the books," most professionals do quite a bit. It's that good ol' American work ethic. We want to do a good job, so we put in time that doesn't count. The three teachers I know all talk about how, after the first 2-3 years, the prep time and grading doesn't take all that long.
2) Don't whine about being paid $2000 to coach a sports team. First, many of us non-school employees give our time to sports teams for free. Gee, I guess we kind of enjoy it, as I assume every high school football coach likes football. All the teams my kids have been on are coached by a combination of teachers and volunteers. Only the teachers get paid for it (although it does basically equate to minimum wage).
3) Don't say the summers off and the spring break, winter break, presidents day, Martin Luther King day, etc. are unpaid. If you compare annual salaries, that's where the equality comes in. If an attorney makes $80,000 for 50 weeks of work (and a lot of work during those two weeks off - calling in to make sure things got filed, etc.), and a teacher makes $45,000 + paid health insurance for 38 weeks of work, where is the inequity.
4) Pure anecdotal evidence: my teacher friend asked me at the end of the summer a couple of years ago how much golf I got in that year. A: Once, a firm outing that we use to schmooze clients. His response? He had gone 20+ times that year, wasn't sure of the exact count.
Steve M | February 5, 2007, 1:10pm | #
Kevrob,
Yes, and one can certainly live well in NYC on 33,000 a year, right? Yes, I know, the salary is higher, but so is Cost of Living. As far as 'Cadillac' health care plans, well, nice for them; the health care plans for teachers in other parts of the country suck. And yes, I make my living on 'coerced payments' from the general citizenry. So do military members, which I was for 6 years, and police officers and firemen and numerous other occupations necessary for the public good, no doubt a loaded term around these parts.
And, by the way, calling them 'publik skools' simply makes you sound snarky and ill-mannered. I'd be willing to put the best public schools against the best private schools anytime. Comparing the two, I will continue to insist, is comparing apples and oranges. PUBLIC SCHOOLS HAVE TO TAKE ALL STUDENTS. Private schools can pick and choose; that is going to skew numbers. Mandate that private schools have to take all applicants and apply the same curricular and testing standards, and see where the comparison ends up.
Look, people have been complaining about education for 400 years. The Puritans, for example, constantly argued that children didn't do what they were supposed to, that literacy was lacking, and that discipline was horrible among kids. We will be arguing over it for the next 400 years.
Hey, you want to let kids choose, let them. I have no problem with that; but we better make sure that children that remain in the public schools are getting a quality education. And, by the way, how do we make sure they have a choice? Some areas only have two or three schools? Who pays for busing hours away to other schools? Who builds new schools? Who will teach at these schools (Florida has a shortage of 30,000 teachers this year, I believe). Should we relax qualifications? What qualifies someone to teach? Content knowledge? Certainly a chemist knows chemistry; doesn't mean he can teach it!
Rant over. Back to studying. And no doubt there are typos plenty in this comment.
Paul | February 5, 2007, 7:44pm | #
Granted, they might get the summer off with pay, but that time is generally spent on training.
Tarran, don't know which teachers you've been hangin' out with, but the group (and I know many) that I hang out (or are at least acquainted with) with are gone so fast at the beginning of summer, the only evidence they even exist are the hair-pins floating in the air. It's three months of camping, traveling, hanging out, sitting on the beach (if you have one, admittedly).
Now, I've been hard on teachers over the years. So let me set the record straight. Few teachers get rich being teachers. So what it all really comes down to for me is the bitch factor. Frankly, I don't care if teachers made six figures, that's not the point. But if you're OUTEARNING and OUTBENEFITTED and OUTVACATIONED when compared to, oh, me, then quit whining to me 24/7 about how underappreciated and underpaid you are. I mean, think about it. How would you like to be working three jobs, making minimum wage, supporting two kids and driving a beater-- and have some idiot making considerably more than you bitch NON-stop about how awful his pay is, how terrible it is to be a teacher, how downtrodden he is-- and then be one of the most powerful constituencies on the planet, AND (somebody stop me) if you live in the right swanky urban area- actually become a PROTECTED SPECIES receiving housing subsidies and all other manner of special perks merely because you made the choice to become a teacher. It's like watching a longshoreman who earns $120,000 year, screaming on the picket line about how hard life is for the workin' man.
Up yours. Bugger off. Teachers are doing fine.
Oh, my sister-in-law who is..yes, a teacher, very quickly corrected me about her work schedule. She says that because of snow days, her district has to work-- -are you sitting down-- as many as 192 days per year. So my glib, flippant remarks about only working 180 days a year were way...wwway off. So sorry. Whelp, better get back to my high-earning 250 day a year job.
kevrob | February 5, 2007, 8:49pm | #
Responding to Steve M:
...live well in NYC on 33,000 a year, right? Yes, I know, the salary is higher, but so is Cost of Living.
The a starting salary for a new hire, isn't too bad -
$42,517 . You could rent in the outer boroughs on that salary, though you might need a roommate. As you move up the salary schedule, you'll do alright, especially if you have a working spouse. Is that enough "combat pay" to offset the hazards of working in a NYC P.S.? Maybe not.
..the health care plans for teachers in other parts of the country suck.
I think the discussion has established that in some areas the unions are entrenched and strong and the benefits are subsequently generous. In others the unions don't have as much clout, and the bennies aren't as good. Point taken.
And yes, I make my living on 'coerced payments' from the general citizenry. So do military members, which I was for 6 years, and police officers
Equating teachers with policeman is ridiculous. The hallmark of a state is its monopoly on the initiation of the aggressive use of force. Yes, we libertarians can point to municipalities who have hired private firms like Wackenhut or Pinkerton to do part, if not all, of their policing, but we generally don't countenance competing enforcement agencies, except as thought experiments. Private sector military work is a step even farther.
Government ownership, funding and/or management of schools is a much more recent development, and try as they might the progressives and KKKers have never actually stamped out the remnants of private education.
... and firemen...
In much of the country, firemen are
volunteers, and a substantial part of VFD budgets come from donations.
...and numerous other occupations necessary for the public good,...
Given the recent lousy record of publik skools - yeah, I wrote that - arguing that they serve the public good is problematic. in fact, I'd argue that the entire Mann/Dewey enterprise has been damaging to the nature of the Republic.
.... no doubt a loaded term around these parts.
Of course. Libertarians are skeptical of claims that a service is so different from others that its provision must be made in common, controlled and funded by the state. Grocery stores serve the "public good," as most of us would starve without access to them. That's no reason to nationalize the grocery industry. Even our welfare system knows enough to provide "grocery vouchers" to its clients: the Food Stamp program.
....calling them 'publik skools' simply makes you sound snarky and ill-mannered.
Maybe so, but calling Government Schools "public" was always a rhetorical trick. The English "public school" was a private creature, called "public" in contrast to private tutoring.
I'd be willing to put the best public schools against the best private schools anytime.
Go right ahead. I might disagree with you on which schools are "best." I'm sure the heads of students at Sidwell Friends are filled up with as much PC crap as they are at Suburban Estates Public High.
...is comparing apples and oranges. PUBLIC SCHOOLS HAVE TO TAKE ALL STUDENTS.
Except when they expel troublemakers into "alternative schools," a policy I find eminently sensible.
Private schools can pick and choose; that is going to skew numbers.
That's not always true. In the Milwaukee Choice Program that isn't the case. If a kid has a voucher, he can attend any participating school that hasn't filled up its "choice slots." As for the rest of the country, most private school kids go to religious schools. I haven't heard that they discriminate against non-members of their faiths. The Catholic Schools in many big cities educate significant numbers of minority students. You might expect that mostly Catholic Hispanics would take to Catholic education, but mostly Protestant African-Americans are served, also.
Mandate that private schools have to take all applicants and apply the same curricular and testing standards, and see where the comparison ends up.
In other words, replicate the format of government education, with perhaps a tacked-on religion class? That's silly. The differences in curricula, discipline and often religious content is what makes the two types of schools different. A Chevy could match a Ferrari sometimes, if you made the Italian car use a Detroit engine.
The problem of teaching "special needs" children could be dealt with by assigning students eligible for such help a "super voucher" that is worth substantially more than the normal ones. Parents may choose to spend those at schools especially suited to their child's particular needs, which might thwart the militant mainstreamers. But as long as any such segregation is self-segregation, I wouldn't object to it.
I remember having to take Iowa basic skills tests and the like in Catholic grammar school, and we took the New York State Regents exams, just like the "public" kids. That may have been state-required or voluntary, but either way our schools held their own against the Scarsdales and Great Necks.
(More to come)
Kevin
kevrob | February 5, 2007, 8:53pm | #
...additional
...people have been complaining
about education for 400 years. - Steve M.
Don't be a piker! Go back to Plato, Aristotle and Socrates! What is
The Republic but the mad dream of the West's first Edu-blob thinktanker?
..you want to let kids choose, let them. I have no problem with that;
I'd prefer their
parents do the choosing, but I suppose the rare child could be trusted to do that job. Good to know you aren't reflexively anti-choice.
....make sure that children that remain in the public schools are getting a quality education.
At least for our inner city schools, nobody seems to know how to do that in the current model.
And, by the way, how do we make sure they have a choice?
***snipping workability objections****
The Milwaukee experience shows that, when funds are made available, schools will be organized to spend them. Shopping out in the boonies can get limited, so I suppose those in densely populated areas will have more choices in schools as they do in stores. As for busing, in the Northeastern state I grew up in, the government paid for busing of all students to schools within a certain radius from their homes, assuming you didn't live close enough to walk. The government provided private school children with textbooks, too. "Aid to the student" is constitutional, even if state aid to a religious organization isn't. As for qualifications for teaching, I am not exactly sure what they should be. I'd let the market decide them. Various certification groups could arise, just as there are competing accreditation outfits for schools. From what I can tell about Ed School, much of what they teach is actively
harmful to kids, so I wouldn't trust the Blob to set standards.
I'm not going to bust anyone over keyboarding errors in posting on
H&R, unless it produces something that's accidently hilarious. I make enough of my own mistakes.
And, generally:
As for class size, when my elementary school still had a significant number of nuns teaching, and tuition could be kept low enough, there would be 50 students in a first grade class. By the time 8th grade graduation rolled around, and the post-Vatican II vocation drought had caused the school to hire a majority of lay teachers, class size was down to a little over 30. That was similar to what we had in our Catholic H.S. classes. What we lacked was the most modern science equipment, anything like a language lab, and minimal art and music training. We had to be satisfied with a 90%-plus college acceptance rate, and every 40th kid in our graduating class a National Merit finalist. Small class size may mean more work for teachers, but it doesn't necessarily hurt student achievement.
Vault: I've got a brother who eventually took after my Dad and became a coach. For several years he worked as a
volunteer, just to get enough experience to land a paying part-time coaching gig. He was working in Arizona and Texas, and his main sport is football, so he could relate to you. he didn't care how poorly a high school paid him. His goal was to get noticed by some college, and move up into those ranks. Not all compensation is monetary, or immediate.
Kevin
kevrob | February 6, 2007, 6:57pm | #
Quoting
vault_dog4... two things that won't help: vouchers and merit pay.
Why not? The Milwaukee School Choice program seems to satify the parents of those children. Along with other choice options, including virtual schools, open enrollment, and charter schools, they look to be saving students one kid at a time. Now, the standard issue government schools are having problems improving performance, but that's not the fault of the choice alternatives.
As for merit pay, I don't know if we'll ever see that in an unadulterated form. I expect that, where a union is strong, there will be a bad case of "everybody gets a bonus."
....you can't put free market parts into a non-free market system and expect it to get better.
Sure you can. Contracting out a service can be more efficient than a municipality managing a program. Our colleges and universities are well-thought-of internationally, and many of them are private. Some aid follows the student at both types of institutions - Pell Grants, subsidized loans, G.I. Bill, etc.
And we would have to overhaul everything about education that we have accepted for over a century (especially with educational psych and cognitive development).
I don't have the expertise to criticize that, except to wonder whether whatever the accepted orthodoxy is actually works. Alternatives such as Montessori and Waldorf have their proponents, and parents that use them swear by them. I'd prefer a universe of theories competing to prove themselves to top-down dicta from state Ed Depts.
Not saying public education is perfect, but privatized schools are not a panacea.
I'm not saying private education is perfect, and it's no panacea, but separation of school and state conforms more to liberty than state-run systems. A ban on governments owning and operating schools was a serious oversight in the writing of the First Amendment and its state counterparts. Pehaps that's because, at the time of the founding, secular common schools paid for by the state were virtually non-existent.
Kevin
vault_dog4 | February 6, 2007, 8:50pm | #
There are too many problems with allowing children to have vouchers and move to new schools where they feel they are better served.
First, in rural areas (in Texas, where I reside) there are a limited amount of choices. Kids will be stuck no matter how many vouchers you give them. To ask a family to move or to send their kid to a boarding school or relative is almost laughable.
Second, schools are fairly inelastic in size. If a school is popular enough and in a metro area, they will not be able to take all kids that want to go there. There are only so many kids you can fit into a classroom or school until you have to build new buildings. And since property taxes, not vouchers, pay for school improvements (as is in Texas), the schools will not receive any additional funding to help increase the size.
Third, since only children with available options will be the ones changing schools, it will be those that are able (city children with means of transportation). These will typically be your upper class students that have good grades anyways (primarily) and want to get away from whatever is plaguing them in their current school. In Texas, we call this 'white flight'.
Due to this, obviously schools that take in these great number of scholastic overacheivers will have terrific scores and wonderful success.
Merit pay will award those teachers that have great kids. Teachers that deal with learning disabled kids will have a harder time receiving merit pay than a teacher that only deals with AP or Honors students. Hence, it will pay more to teach smarter kids. Actually, the more important part is that is will pay LESS to teach the not as intelligent kids.
Poorer schools will get poorer and richer schools will get richer. Inner city schools will continue to lose teachers and quality of instruction.
As for the ed pysch, just my opinion that all kids don't learn at the same rate and grade placement should depend on intelligence level, not age. Of course, if your pay depends on children passing to the next grade level, we're back to square one.
Just my observations.
kevrob | February 7, 2007, 1:47am | #
First, we shouldn't let the peculiar circumstances of rural children make the rule for kids who live in cities, suburbs and close-in "exurbs." If people choose to live in areas where population density is so low that only one school is economically viable, that's no different than the days when one's alternatives for shopping were the General Store or the mail order catalog. In pioneer days, families would sometimes send their children to boarding schools. If that's too unrealistic for today's students, home schooling is an option, and the virtual school might be especially appealing to rural folks.
As for schools having to turn away students, that can be handled several ways. Where I grew up, placement in many of the the local private high schools was determined by an application process centered around a cooperative entrance examination. You picked 4 schools in order of preference, and waited to see if you got into your top choice or got on the waiting list. There were no vouchers involved, however. Milwaukee is the city whose voucher experiment I'm most familiar with. As of now, only low-income students can participate. When there is competition for slots at a school, a random selection lottery is turned to.* I believe Cleveland does the same, and Florida did, too, before their state court struck down their plan. I'd prefer vouchers to only extend to poorer families, as parents who can afford it ought to pay tuition. Then we could take a whack at some state and local taxes. New choice schools don't tend to be large. Older participating schools haven't ballooned in size, in part because the state has set caps on participation in the program. If that is a real problem, the changeover could be phased in, and the caps slowly lifted, giving schools time to organize and/or expand.
As for "white flight"...
... it is often not the "good" students who leave. Their parents are often satisfied with how they are doing. Citing research from University of Wisconsin professor John Witte, Wisconsin's nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau, and Kim Metcalf of the Indiana University School of Education, Caire and Fuller point out that it is failing students whose parents are desperate to find alternatives who are flocking to school choice programs. Casey Lartigue Jr - Helping Kids Succeed in School Is Not "Creaming"
Calculating merit pay could be tricky. Having better students could be offset by pretesting classes, and judging the teachers on student improvement. Moving an D- student to a C would be more of an achievement than getting an A student up to A+. Again, LD students ought to get a super-voucher, and their teachers should be judged on their charges' relative progress.
It's still a damned bad idea to have children spend their formative years in the grip of an essentially socialist institution. It's bad for the formation of the citizenry. Citizensgip training was part of the original excuse to get government involved in schooling in the first place, wasn't it?
Kevin
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