Speaking of things that are combinations of fact, gossip, hearsay, and myth, at Brookings Dick Startz makes a noble attempt at shedding some light on the issue of teacher pensions:
Teacher pensions are a mess. Understanding what’s going on with teacher pensions is messy as heck. However, some progress can be made if we divide the topic into two pieces: Are teacher pensions really high? (Not so much.) Are teacher pensions really expensive? (Not only expensive, they’re even more expensive than it appears on the surface.)
One piece of advice. Never, ever use averages in your analysis or at the very least try to avoid them. Ranges or medians are much better but averages are like the a fan dancer’s fan. They’re intended to conceal while appearing to reveal. The pensions of a very small number of very highly compensated individuals in the private sector can skew the results beyond all recognition.
So, for example, the median private pension benefit in 2014 was $9,227. The median private sector total retirement income including pensions, annuities, and Social Security benefits was around $24,000.
One thing in the article caught my eye:
Teachers, like most of us, make contributions to their pension as does their employer.
In Illinois that’s not entirely true. Although in theory teachers make contributions to their pensions, in practice many if not most districts put in the employee contribution as well as the employer contribution. That’s the case in Chicago, for example.
He also fails to mention that most teaching positions are nine or ten month positions.
I think that case studies would be a much better way of explicating the thorny issue of teacher pensions than the from 50,000 feet, national averages approach Mr. Startz is taking. A $30,000 pension in Mattoon and a $30,000 pension in Chicago just don’t belong in the same category.
Just for the record I don’t begrudge teachers their pensions. At least here in Illinois and in Chicago the issue is one of political malfeasance, misfeasance, and nonfeasance. Our elected officials failed to contribute to the public employee pension funds from the mid 90s to the early 2010s, digging a hole from which it is now impossible to escape. They preferred to use the money for other purposes so they shortchanged the public employee pension funds rather than raising taxes.
The politicians responsible for the mess? They were overwhelmingly supported by the public employees’ unions. If you can figure out some exculpatory reason for that you’re a better man than I am.
