Public School Teachers Aren't Underpaid (WSJ)

[RogerR]

Originally Posted by Basel A

My primary dissent to the article's argument is that while public school teachers appear to be overpaid (compared to similarly educated private-sector jobs), this straightforward comparison ignores the idea that public school teaching or even teaching in general should be incentivised to attract better-qualified candidates.

If nothing else, I mainly get the idea that public school teachers should be better educated, even if it's suggested that they should receive lower wages.

Both of the above stem from my view that education is a priority. I would find it hardly believable that anyone who sees FIRST's mission as important would disagree.

P.S. I love the hocus-pocus reasoning. "If we compare teachers and non-teachers with similar AFQT scores, the teacher salary penalty disappears." First, I'd like to get a source for that data. Second, who said the AFQT is a good measure of education and why? Who said it should be used to determine salary and why?

This

While the article begins with admission that teachers make 20% less than similarly educated peers, it goes on to argue that this is apparently deserved because teachers are dumber than everybody else.

If we start with the assumption that teaching is a profession worthy only of the mediocre, and pay as much, what sort of candidates will you attract? A better comparison might be between teacher pay of the countries ahead of us in education...


I'm in the same situation as sandrag; I have a BS in engineering, and am getting my Masters in Ed. Including salary and benefits, even with my masters, I will never make more in education than I did in engineering. On top of this, I have weeks (months?) of unpaid overtime, that is never acknowledged. I also spend significant amounts of my own money to supply my classroom, as the classroom budget is meager enough to begin with. Finally, as sandrag mentioned, there is little in the way of support for earning masters; while a private company may pay for you to further your education, no such opportunity exists (that I know of) in education.

Pay aside, teaching is a much more difficult job than engineering (to me at least). I don't know any teachers who came into the field looking for easy money. We do what we do for the students, and often in spite of the long hours, frequent political scapegoating, and overwhelming level of paperwork. We don't do our jobs because of our mediocre pay. We do our jobs in spite of it.

[JesseK]

In the article they state that good teachers are valuable to a strong economy -- yet also present several pieces of evidence that support their perspective that we are overvaluing our teachers. This implies that they want to disconnect the value of a profession from the value it provides in an economy, which is wierd because they cited several instances (test scores, for example) where more skills should generate more value in the economy. When combined with their argument of compensation versus skillset, transitivity should hold and we get the argument that more value to an economy should net more compensation. Yet they conveniently failed to provide any corollary arguments to support their claims in that higher-compensated positions generate any sort of value in an economy. For example, investment bankers create no organic economic growth (they shift money around ... that's all they do ...), therefore aren't 'skilled' at anything but generating their own (or clients') wealth. They are paid magnitudes more than teachers, who plant the seeds of future organic economic growth. What an oxymoron.

While some of the evidence they present may warrant more investigation and thought with respect to teacher compensation, their bias is obvious. Original paper here.

Here's some more evidence that they're completely biased since they're quoting (in the paper) something that assumes association without proving causation for the basis:

The Journal of Higher Education reported in 1960 that 32 percent of students in education courses received “A” grades, compared to just 16 percent in business courses.

Take your pick for how to pick this one apart:
1.) Just because less people understood Business than understood Education back in 1960 does not mean teachers teachers today are lacking in their skill set compared to their compensation.
2.) Just because more business majors than education majors were lazy in 1960 than teacher doesn't mean teachers today are lacking in their skill set compared to their compensation.
3.) Just because business professors, coming off of the economic boom in the 50's, were harder on their students in 1960 than education professors were, doesn't mean teachers today are lacking in their skill set compared to their compensation.
4.) Even if educational curricula in college were easier in 1960, the authors fail to present evidence that such is the case now, more than 50 years (~2 generations) later.

Final thoughts: they're painting a broad stroke across all teachers by apply the same [often incorrect] assumptions to each discipline, situation, and local economy. WSJ is also a bit late to the game with this one since a very similar article was presented back in April by a different source, yet the WSJ article shows a disturbing trend with these writers. These two guys are incorrect in applying their basic paper of overpaid public workers to every public works profession because the fundamental assumptions they make (regarding privatization of the positions they write about) has historically proven to not be in the best interest of the American economy.

So Chris, they are trying to push their message that "the free market works".