I have seen these statistics before, and this is not the correct way to view things.

Let us imagine for a moment that today we were spending WW-II (inflation adjusted) numbers to educate students. Let us further imagine that we had 30 students per classroom.

So ... $1,200x30 = $36,000 per classroom. Subtract out maybe $3,000 per year for textbooks and supplies, so we've got $33,000 left. Then subtract out for electricity, heat, janitorial services, cost of running the bus, a small fraction of a librarian, books for the library ...

Maybe we have left $20K-$15K to pay the teacher both salary and benefits. Health care is about $5K per year, so we will be offering average salaries of $10K to $15K per year to the teachers. Starting salaries will be lower.

I think it is pretty obvious that while this was enough salary to compete for talent in 1945, it isn't enough today.

This illustrates the problem with numbers like those quoted. Part of what the money spent on schools is doing is trying to be competitive with salaries offered by other jobs that the people we want to be teachers might take. Inflation adjusted numbers don't take this into account because everyone makes more in inflation adjusted terms since 1945 (that is part of why we are wealthier as a country).

A more relevant number would be something like %GDP-spent-per-pupil (it would be a very small number!) over time. That would (probably) take into account increases in wealth and income across the board.

Now ... I've made a big assumption in the above analysis.

The assumption is that teaching can't get any more efficient (in the economic sense). If I had to guess, I'd guess that engineers get paid maybe 4x today what they did in 1945. Today's engineers, however, can do things that were simply impossible in 1945. In a very real sense, today's engineers are at least 4x as productive as their 1945 counterparts. A huge reason for this is that the tools have gotten better.

Teaching hasn't changed much since 1945. One teacher, one class (15-30 students ... the class size has dropped), chalkboard/whiteboard or maybe overhead-projector or powerpoint. Lecture and books and tests.

Teachers could be paid much better if we could find a way for them to teach more effectively. Unfortunately, while in engineering a lot of money gets spent on building new tools and purchasing new tools that prove to be effective (because the firms that do this correctly make more money), the incentive to do this in education seems to be non-existant.

So, to summarize:

As stated, the inflation numbers don't mean anything in terms of productivity because education must compete for employees in an economy that is gradually becoming wealthier.

         Terrific book.


Illinois Loop page on school funding



-- CatherineJohnson - 19 Jul 2006

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Comments

Sigh.

I have seen these statistics before, and this is not the correct way to view things.

Let us imagine for a moment that today we were spending WW-II (inflation adjusted) numbers to educate students. Let us further imagine that we had 30 students per classroom.

So ... $1,200x30 = $36,000 per classroom. Subtract out maybe $3,000 per year for textbooks and supplies, so we've got $33,000 left. Then subtract out for electricity, heat, janitorial services, cost of running the bus, a small fraction of a librarian, books for the library ...

Maybe we have left $20K-$15K to pay the teacher both salary and benefits. Health care is about $5K per year, so we will be offering average salaries of $10K to $15K per year to the teachers. Starting salaries will be lower.

I think it is pretty obvious that while this was enough salary to compete for talent in 1945, it isn't enough today.

This illustrates the problem with numbers like those quoted. Part of what the money spent on schools is doing is trying to be competative with salaries offered by other jobs that the people we want to be teachers might take. Inflation adjusted numbers don't take this into account because everyone makes more in inflation adjusted terms since 1945 (that is part of why we are wealthier as a country).

A more relevant number would be something like %GDP-spent-per-pupil (it would be a very small number!) over time. That would (probably) take into account increases in wealth and income across the board.

Now ... I've made a big assumption in the above analysis.

The assumption is that teaching can't get any more efficient (in the economic sense). If I had to guess, I'd guess that engineers get paid maybe 4x today what they did in 1945. Today's engineers, however, can do things that were simply impossible in 1945. In a very real sense, today's engineers are at least 4x as productive as their 1945 counterparts. A huge reason for this is that the tools have gotten better.

Teaching hasn't changed much since 1945. One teacher, one class (15-30 students ... the class size has dropped), chalkboard/whiteboard or maybe overhead-projector or powerpoint. Lecture and books and tests.

Teachers could be paid much better if we could find a way for them to teach more effectively. Unfortunately, while in engineering a lot of money gets spent on building new tools and purchasing new tools that prove to be effective (because the firms that do this correctly make more money), the incentive to do this in education seems to be non-existant.

So, to summarize:

As stated, the inflation numbers don't mean anything in terms of productivity because education must compete for employees in an economy that is gradually becoming wealthier.

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 19 Jul 2006

Hi Mark -

Have you taken a look at Hoxby's work?

She argues that the real problem with competitiveness is wage compression, not absolutely salary amount (assuming I'm stating that correctly).

In other words, salary levels are competitive (which is what the researcher in Missouri finds, too - I've forgotten his name).

What isn't competitive is the fact that the top people can't advance & earn significantly more than the bottom & middle people.

At least around here, salaries are highly competitive. I came across a job board for Westchester, and learned that there are many candidates for every job.

I found data backing that up on our state website.

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Jul 2006

Here's Podgursky:

Economist Michael Podgursky, professor of economics at the University of Missouri, has calculated professional compensation on an hourly basis, and finds that teachers actually get paid more, on average, than workers in other occupations requiring similar—and even higher—levels of education. In addition, the health, pension, and other fringe benefits accorded teachers compare favorably to those of other jobs.

My sister in law, a highly skilled nurse practitioner now completing her Ph.D. told me she and her husband both wish they'd become teachers.

The salaries, the security, the excellent benefits, the guaranteed pension - teachers are way ahead of nurses.

-- CatherineJohnson - 20 Jul 2006

I have read Dr. Hoxyby's "Pulled Away or Pushed Out? Explaining the Decline of Teacher Aptitude in the United States" paper. Her points are well taken, but kinda orthogonal to the point in the "Education Myths" quote.

What is unfortunate, is that there doesn't seem to be much experimentation happening. For example, I live in California where the average teacher salary here is about $52K/year. I think the average class size is about 20. Assuming $10K in benefits (which I think might be low ... figure health care is $5K). So, imagine that we restructure things so that each teacher has classes of 40 kids, but also has one low-paid aide (the aide can do things like grade a lot of the papers and prepare handouts and stuff).

Now ... we can proably pay the teacher something like $75K (on average) and pay the aide maybe $25K. I'm thinking that a lot of currently stay-at-home-parents (moms mostly) might be delighted to work in their own kid's classroom (or right next door) for $25K/year.

But notice that several things have happened:

• The teachers now are paid $75K/year on average, so the range can probably be $50K-$100K. For a 9 month job.
• We only need 1/2 as many teachers, so we can fire the bottom 50%. The average ability should go up. Probably a lot.
• The teacher doesn't need to spend so much time on busy-work. Yes, the graded papers need to be reviewed, but a lot of the rote mark-up can be done by the aide.

Now, the class size has doubled, but since the teacher has less busy work and we only keep the top 50% of the teachers it isn't obvious whether education gets better or worse. My guess is better (especially for the older classes), but without an experiment we'll never know.

This experiment isn't going to happen. It flies in the face of current orthodoxy (smaller class sizes are good ... ).

This is a bummer because the only real way for the teachers to get paid much more is to actually deliver better/more teaching per dollar spent. Teaching fewer kids isn't exactly a good way to go about this. I don't think many of them realize this :-(

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 20 Jul 2006

"The salaries, the security, the excellent benefits, the guaranteed pension - teachers are way ahead of nurses."

I don't think so. Teachers have to deal with the education bureaucracy. They have to deal with unhappy parents or with apathetic parents. They frequently don't get support from the parents on things like whether homework should be done.

Nurses are always the good-guys (just like firefighters). I'd rather be a nurse than a teacher, even though I'd really like to teach.

"My sister in law, a highly skilled nurse practitioner now completing her Ph.D. told me she and her husband both wish they'd become teachers."

And I'm an engineer and lots of engineers complain that they'll tell their children to go into anything but engineering. I think the grass is always greener, largely because from a distance all the annoying things don't show up.

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 20 Jul 2006

So, imagine that we restructure things so that each teacher has classes of 40 kids, but also has one low-paid aide (the aide can do things like grade a lot of the papers and prepare handouts and stuff).

Just to add a thought to your interesting thought experiment, the volunteers at our school have performed these duties for free... and I'm not sure it helps. It seems to give teachers more leisure time, but they don't spend that time perfecting their instruction of reading, writing, or arithmetic.

At our affluent suburban school, I think that teachers aren't paying the full price of their chosen instructional program, either through standing at a copier to produce the handouts that children will need for the chosen assignments, or through grading all of the papers that are generated by the assignments. The instruction tends towards that which relies on piles and piles of "packets", and less on the teacher's ability to perfect an explanation of fractions, or the Louisiana Purchase, or magnetism.

Test prep, for instance. Would teachers spend so many days on state test preparation if they had to stand at the copier to copy all of the test prep packets?

It might not improve things to make the evaluation of children's spelling and grammar and arithmetic "more costless". How do I describe this? "Externalizing the cost" of instruction?

-- BeckyC - 21 Jul 2006

Teachers have to deal with the education bureaucracy.

Nurses have to deal with doctors (I'm serious about that).

One of our teachers here, a guy who had been an accountant, told parents he'd switched to teaching because, "I wanted the summers off."

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Jul 2006

And I'm an engineer and lots of engineers complain that they'll tell their children to go into anything but engineering. I think the grass is always greener, largely because from a distance all the annoying things don't show up.

When I hear a teacher saying she'd rather work as a nurse, I'll believe you!

Most people work very hard, year round, for salaries that aren't huge, without tenure, etc.

What's more, teachers at elite private schools earn significantly less money and do a significantly better job.

The idea that $75,000 would give us the best teachers just doesn't add up from where I sit. One of the moms whose put her kids in the Masters School used to sit on hiring committees here in the district. The principal refused even to interview anyone who had a Ph.D. or a degree from an elite school.

He automatically ruled those candidates out.

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Jul 2006

I found the statistics:

• Salaries for public school teachers average 64 percent higher than those of all private school teachers, 68 percent above those of Roman Catholic school teachers, 87 percent above those of other religious school teachers, and 32 percent above those of non-sectarian private school teachers.

• Public school teachers' salaries are 22 percent above those of elite private school teachers.

• Average salaries for public school principals are nearly double that of private school principals.

• The turnover rate of private school teachers is 50 percent greater than that for public school teachers.

Public Purpose

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Jul 2006

Superintendents in Westchester County, who are required to have teaching credentials (and to have taught, I believe) are making 200,000 - 400,000 k.

They start young, too.

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Jul 2006

I've sat in meetings at which teachers talk about various administrators' "sweet deals."

Christian says the high school parking lot, where only teachers are allowed to park, looks like a Lexus dealership.

That's an exaggeration, but not by much. The interim principal at MSS had several pricey cars - I normally saw him driving a late model Jaguar. Christopher's science teacher drives a Mercedes.

These are very, very good jobs.

-- CatherineJohnson - 21 Jul 2006

"When I hear a teacher saying she'd rather work as a nurse, I'll believe you!"

The teachers may not be saying that, but I think I remember that 50% of rookie teachers are out of the profession within five years. I don't think that 50% of rookie nurses have bailed on nursing entirely after five years (but I don't have data on this).

I don't think that the typical teacher is underpaid, but I don't think that the typical teacher is overpaid, either.

Where you live, the pay, benefits, etc. may be great. But the statistics that started this whole thread were averages, no?

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 23 Jul 2006

Hmmm ... maybe the dropout rate isn't as bad as I'd believed.

"Very few teachers change schools or leave the profession because they are dissatisfied with their previous school or with teaching in general. Both public and private school teachers leave teaching for personal reasons whereas the reasons why teachers change schools are more varied. The rate of migration for teachers is higher earlier in their careers and decreases as they obtain more experience. For attrition, more teachers tend to leave the profession within the first 9 years of their career; fewer teachers leave during mid-career and the rate increases as teachers approach retirement."

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs95/web/95770.asp

-Mark Roulo

-- KtmGuest - 23 Jul 2006

Where you live, the pay, benefits, etc. may be great.

They're fantastic.

Actually, as to nurses, I think we do have a shortage there - is that right?

At least, it seems to me I'm reading articles about importing nurses from the Philippines, etc.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Jul 2006

Teachers who leave say that they're going because of the conditions of work, not the salaries. That's a pretty standard finding.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Jul 2006

btw, I'm not sure about a nursing shortage; I just have the impression I'm still reading about shortages....this could be another baseless meme

yeah...I see you've got the other data on teachers, which is that teachers who've been teaching for awhile have a very low attrition rate

Also, I came across some fantastic data, and I don't have a clue where I saw it (though I'll be looking) about career-changers.

People who change careers to become teachers have very low attrition rates.

-- CatherineJohnson - 24 Jul 2006