A couple of years ago during the Chicago teachers’ strike, I saw a neighbor sporting a sweatshirt emblazoned with the slogan “Teachers Should Be Paid As Much As Plumbers”. I turned to my wife and said “I wonder how she would react to learn that in Chicago teachers are paid more than plumbers.” My wife, with characteristic commonsense, suggested it would probably be better if I kept that fact to myself.
That’s what I thought of when I read Robert Maranto’s remarks on teacher pay in the Wall Street Journal:
Nationally, teachers make a median $58,000 a year, with great benefits. This is better than some activists claim, but it still puts teachers in the lower tier of professionals. While the proposed 20% raises in Arizona and Oklahoma are a good start, I would go further. A 40% raise would lift the median teacher’s pay far above that of accountants ($68,000) and into the same ballpark as civil engineers ($84,000). Surely educating the nation’s children is as important as balancing books or building bridges.
The median pay for a Chicago teacher is $71,000. The median pay for a civil engineer in Chicago is $70,000. The Chicago teacher is being paid for a nine or ten month position. The engineer for a twelve month position. Additionally, when the teacher retires he or she is eligible for a pension of 75% of pay to which she or he has not contributed a sou. Teachers do not pay Social Security. Mission accomplished. Next?
I suspect that pay is better in general in the city. In rural areas it is often quite low, especially starting salaries. Teachers don’t work the full year. The only indicator I can think of which justifies higher pay is the high rate of teacher dropout.
Steve
Teacher compensation is also backloaded in most places. So if you quit or move to another state before you’re vested (7-10 years) you get nothing but the low salaries.
Combined with a compensation system that primarily rewards education degrees and seniority, it creates a perverse system.
One example I’ve mentioned before is an Air Force friend who has a PhD in Aerospace Engineering. He always wanted to teach high school physics after he left the service but found out that his degree and experience meant little and he’d start at the bottom and would need a masters in Education to advance beyond the base salary.
My wife, who also has an engineering doctorate, ran into the same problems – she is looking at a university instead or going back into government.
We also have three grade school teachers in our extended family – they start out with very little pay, have to pay for a lot of classroom supplies out of pocket (except the one who works in an upper-middle class school district where the parents are eager to donate). One had to move because her husband moved for his career and she is starting at the bottom in a new district. One has been in the same district for 20 years and will do well when she retires. The third is a daughter of the second one and she is just getting started in a poor district in suburban Detroit. She’s already working on her Educations masters part time because that’s the quickest way to a pay raise.
All in all, the compensation systems for teachers in the states I’m familiar with leaves a lot to be desired. It serves the interests of the teachers’ unions and those with seniority, but few others.