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This report compares the pay, pension costs and retiree health benefits of teachers with those of similarly qualified private-sector workers. The study concludes that teachers receive total compensation 52% greater than fair market levels, which translates into a $120 billion annual "overcharge" to taxpayers. Built on a series of faulty analyses, this study misrepresents total teacher compensation in fundamental ways. First, teachers' 12% lower pay is dismissed as being appropriate for their lesser intelligence, although there is no foundation for such a claim. Total benefits are calculated as having a monetary value of 100.8% of pay, while the Department of Labor disagrees, giving a figure of 32.8%-a figure almost identical to that of people employed in the private sector. Pension costs are valued at 32%, but the real number is closer to 8.4%. The shorter work year is said to represent 28.8% additional compensation but the real work year is only 12% shorter. Teachers' job stability is said to be worth 8.6%, although the case for such a claim is not sustained. In sum, this report is based on an aggregation of such spurious claims. The actual salary and benefits for teachers show they are in fact undercompensated by 19%.

The teaching profession is crucial to America's society and economy, but public-school teachers should receive compensation that is neither higher nor lower than market rates. Do teachers currently receive the proper level of compensation? Standard analytical approaches to this question compare teacher salaries to the salaries of similarly educated and experienced private-sector workers, and then add the value of employer contributions toward fringe benefits. These simple comparisons would indicate that public-school teachers are undercompensated. However, comparing teachers to non-teachers presents special challenges not accounted for in the existing literature.

"In previous posts, I've conveyed my distaste for the oft obsessively narrow thinking of the traditional labor economist when engaged in education policy research. I've picked on the assumption that greed and personal interest are necessarily the sole driving force of all human rational decision making. And I've picked on the obsession with narrow and circular validity tests. Yet still, sometimes, I see quotes from researchers I otherwise generally respect, that completely blow my mind. I gotta say, this quote from Tom Kane of Harvard regarding compensation for teachers holding masters degrees is right up there with the worst of them - most notably because it conveys such an obscenely narrow perspective of compensation policies (public or private sector) and broader complexities of labor market dynamics."

No, the headline is not a typo. It's the conclusion of a new study "Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers" by Jason Richwine, senior policy analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, and Andrew Biggs, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. They attempt to show that public school teachers receive compensation far more generous than is widely believed. They cite summers off, job security, and fringe benefits (health insurance etc.) that make "total compensation 52 percent greater than fair market levels, equivalent to more than $120 billion overcharged to taxpayers each year." Ordinarily, I wouldn't bother to comment about the study because none of it says anything that is really new. But because the media is giving it big play, I can't let the facts cited slide by.

"The 2013 Attack on Teachers included the vicious slow impoverishment of elderly retired teachers. By attacking the earned delayed compensation (pensions) of active and retired teachers, the corporate led war against public education hits a terrorist level of ruthlessness. Who wishes to teach if they are assured of having their paychecks cut and plundered by corporate controlled legislators when they become old? Yes, this is The Shock Doctrine applied to teachers in state after state. Teachers, students, parents, taxpayers and the future of America are victims on the sacrificial altar of Insane Profit."

Along comes neo-liberal education reform, built around the idea that the invisible hand of markets and competition can solve educational problems.  A whole raft of activity follows.  Reformers talk about billions spent each year compensating teachers for master's degrees that are disconnected from student outcomes.  Municipalities and school boards balk at funding automatic step raises on the grounds that longevity does not equal quality.  The linchpins of tenure and seniority come under assault on the somewhat contradictory grounds that tenure protects bad teachers and seniority encourages the mal-distribution of good teachers.

Denver's Professional Compensation System for Teachers ("ProComp") is one of the most prominent alternative teacher compensation reforms in the nation.* Via a combination of ten financial incentives, ProComp seeks to increase student achievement by motivating teachers to improve their instructional practices and by attracting and retaining high-quality teachers to work in the district. My research examines ProComp in terms of: 1) whether it has increased retention rates; 2) the relationship between retention and school quality (defined in terms of student test score growth); and 3) the reasons underlying these effects. I pay special attention to the effects of ProComp on schools that serve high concentrations of poor students - "Hard to Serve" (HTS) schools where teachers are eligible to receive a financial incentive to stay. The quantitative findings are discussed briefly below (I will discuss my other results in a future post).

Increased spending and decreased student performance have been attributed in part to teachers' unions and to the collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) they negotiate with school boards. However, only recently have researchers begun to examine impacts of specific aspects of CBAs on student and district outcomes. This article uses a unique measure of contract restrictiveness generated through the use of a partial independence item response model to examine the relationships between CBA strength and district spending on multiple areas and district-level student performance in California. I find that districts with more restrictive contracts have higher spending overall, but that this spending appears not to be driven by greater compensation for teachers but by greater expenditures on administrators' compensation and instruction-related spending. Although districts with stronger CBAs spend more overall and on these categories, they spend less on books and supplies and on school board-related expenditures. In addition, I find that contract restrictiveness is associated with lower average student performance, although not with decreased achievement growth.

"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing." When Oscar Wilde wrote those words in The Picture of Dorian Gray 120 years ago, he had no idea that they would eventually apply to public schools. I thought of the connection after reading "Critical Issues in Assessing Teacher Compensation" by Jason Richwine and Andrew G. Biggs that was released on Jan. 10 (Backgrounder No. 2638, The Heritage Foundation).

A recent report from the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute, Assessing the Compensation of Public School Teachers, claims public school teachers are paid 52 percent more than fair market rates. While attention-grabbing, this contention is based on a faulty assessment that relies on "an aggregation of spurious claims" to make its case, according to a labor market expert.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet with one of the Department of Education's Teaching Ambassador Fellows to give feedback on a not-yet-public draft of the policy proposal before it is offered to schools. While there was much to like about the proposal, it also contained some poorly conceived ideas that would be ineffective at best, and at worst could further damage the nation's education system. Project RESPECT calls for a three-pronged reform of the teaching profession. It envisions a reorganization of schools that would use technology and aides to put more effective teachers in front of more students, coupled with a longer school day to give teachers more time for professional growth. To find more effective teachers, it calls for an expansion of entry points into the profession, with a higher bar for earning a permanent position. Finally, it calls for increased compensation for career teachers who both stay in the classroom and take on various teacher-leader roles.

American teachers deal with a lot: low pay, growing class sizes and escalating teacher-bashing from politicians and pundits. Federal testing and accountability mandates under No Child Left Behind and, more recently, Race to the Top, have added layers of bureaucracy while eliminating much of the creativity and authentic learning that makes teaching enjoyable. Tack on the recession's massive teacher layoffs and other school cuts, plus the challenges of trying to compensate for increasing child poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity, and you get a trifecta of disincentives to become, or remain, a teacher.

Yesterday I wrote about Juan Gonzalez's article on Success Academy, which was seeking a 50% increase in its management fee from the state, even though it has a surplus of $23.5 million and spent $3.4 million last year on marketing. The typical charter management organization in New York City has a management fee of 7%, but CEO Eva Moskowitz wanted to increase hers to 15%. Given her surplus, it is hard to see a case for "need," especially in light of her fund-raising prowess and the presence of several well-heeled hedge fund managers on her board. Needless to say, she is handsomely compensated at a salary close to $400,000 a year.

The recent spate of cheating scandals in cities like Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington presents an interesting conundrum. Those opposed to education reform schemes tied to the evaluation of student test scores and teacher compensation, or "value added" evaluation, claim that the teachers and administrators who were caught cheating were the victims, compelled to cheat out of fear for their livelihoods. On the other hand, value-added advocates solemnly pronounce that there is no excuse for cheating and that, moreover, cheating teachers and administrators provide the very evidence that reform is necessary. Both positions are valid. Can we work our way out?

Freed - perhaps - of presidential daydreams, freed - perhaps - of desire for another term as mayor, Mr. Bloomberg sounds unburdened by inhibition and convinced that Americans hunger for his insights. Last week he journeyed to M.I.T. to talk entrepreneurship and to distinguish between the private sector (muscular and unsentimental) and the public (flaccid, filled with protesters waving placards and legislators who want only to spend). Then he turned to public school teachers and the silly preoccupation with class size. Most teachers, he said, come from the lowest quarter of their college graduating classes. If he could effect change, he said, "you would cut the number of teachers in half but you would double the compensation of them, and you would weed out all the bad ones and just have good teachers. "Double the class size with a better teacher is a good deal for students."

If 2010 was the year of the bombshell in research in the three "major areas" of market-based education reform - charter schools, performance pay, and value-added in evaluations - then 2011 was the year of the slow, sustained march. Last year, the landmark Race to the Top program was accompanied by a set of extremely consequential research reports, ranging from the policy-related importance of the first experimental study of teacher-level performance pay (the POINT program in Nashville) and the preliminary report of the $45 million Measures of Effective Teaching project, to the political controversy of the Los Angeles Times' release of teachers' scores from their commissioned analysis of Los Angeles testing data. In 2011, on the other hand, as new schools opened and states and districts went about the hard work of designing and implementing new evaluations compensation systems, the research almost seemed to adapt to the situation. There were few (if any) "milestones," but rather a steady flow of papers and reports focused on the finer-grained details of actual policy.

There is huge pressure from all sides - the federal government, Governor Cuomo, and Mayor Bloomberg - on the UFT, the NYC teachers union, to agree to a test-based teacher evaluation and compensation system in NYC. Similar pressures are being exerted on teachers throughout the US, as a result of "Race to the Top" and the corporate reform agenda being promoted by the Gates Foundation and the other members of the Billionaire Boys Club.  In his State of the City address, Bloomberg also proposed that teachers rated highly through such a system should  get a salary increase of $20,000 a year.  Merit pay has been tried in many cities, including NYC, and has never worked to improve student outcomes.  When challenged about the evidence for such a policy, Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson tweeted a link to a recent NY Times puff piece about DC's Impact system, in which a couple of teachers who had received bonuses after being rated "highly effective" were interviewed as saying that this extra pay might persuade them to stay teaching longer.    Stephanie Black is a former teacher in Washington DC.  In both 2010 and 2011 she was rated "effective" by the DCPS evaluation system.  She is now living in Chicago where she tutors math and coaches in an after school program.  Here is her story.

It is a view as ubiquitous as it is simplistic: To improve public education, pay teachers more-a lot more. Union officials, education reformers, scholars, laypeople, and politicians of all stripes endorse this principle in one form or another. However, as we determined in a study released Nov. 1, 2011, by the Heritage Foundation, "Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers," the average public school teacher already is paid more than what he or she is likely to earn in the private sector. Although some may well be underpaid, the typical public school teacher makes roughly $1.52 for every dollar made by a private-sector employee with similar skills.

Ensuring that all students in America's public schools are taught by good teachers is an educational and moral imperative. The teacher is the most important school-based influence on student achievement, and poor children and those of color are less likely to be taught by well-qualified, experienced, and effective teachers than other students. Yet teacher incentive proposals - including those promoted by President Obama's Race to the Top program - are rarely grounded on what high-quality research indicates are the kinds of teacher incentives that lead to school excellence and equity. Few of the current approaches to creating teacher incentives take into account how specific conditions influence whether or not effective teachers will work in high-need schools and will be able to teach effectively in them. This review of research finds little support for a simplistic system of measuring value-added growth, evaluating teachers more "rigorously", and granting bonuses. Instead, the brief supports four recommendations: use the current federal Teacher Incentive Fund to attract qualified, effective teachers to high-needs schools, expand incentives by creating strategic compensation, create working conditions that allow teachers to teach effectively, and more aggressively promote the best practices and policies that spur school excellence and equity. The accompanying legal brief offers legislative language to implement these recommendations.

...the available body of evaluation research on alternative teacher compensation programs does not consistently suggest financial incentives improve teacher retention. In some cases incentives appear to be associated with small increases in retention; in other cases, incentives appear to be associated with decreased retention. The majority of evaluations, however, either found financial incentives had no effect on teacher retention or did not include an examination of retention at all. Accordingly, there is little reason to assume the availability of financial incentives will result in improved teacher retention. If anything, the research to date suggests that other considerations, such as working conditions and leadership, are more important factors in teachers' decisions to stay, move, or leave the profession entirely.