Teacher Salaries - Give Me Numbers, Not Generalities

Rush was talking about teachers today, and summarizing an article where researchers had discovered that teachers (who are paid by tax dollars, therefore public sector workers) are paid more than private sector workers.

Of course - that's teachers who are not university teachers - I know university teachers, i.e. full professors, get paid a lot.

Anyway, the point is when Rush was talking about this, I'm thinking, okay, don't give me percentages, give me numbers. How much does a first year teacher get? A second year teacher. Someone who'se been there for 10 years. How do teacher's salaries vary depending on what school system they are in. Do inner city teachers get paid more than those who teach in a school out in the boonies?

College professors who are apparently teaching our teenagers and young adults socialism, yeah, they don't deserve a lot of money (although they get it), but teachers who have to deal with any kid from the age of 10 or 12 up to 18 - hell, yeah, they deserve a lot of money. (Assuming they're good.) I mean - kids... disrespectful, bullying towards others, don't care if they learn anything or no....who wants to do that kind of work! THat's got to be worse than being a plumber! (And how much do plumbers charge per hour, eh?)

Anyway, here's Rush summarizing the article:

Now, the reason I'm gonna spend some time on this is because we always hear about how teachers don't earn anything and they're so important. "It's just not right, Mr. Limbaugh. These athletes, A-Rod, with his $275 million contract, what's A-Rod doing for people compared to teachers? Teachers do so much more for people. Teachers are so important, they're so underpaid, it's just not right, Mr. Limbaugh, just isn't right. Teachers are so important, and we just disrespect them throughout all of our society." That's the public conventional wisdom.

And as the Washington Examiner writes: "We can already hear the anguished, angry protests of the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers. But our headline captures the essence of an important new study being released today by Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis and American Enterprise Institute's Andrew Biggs. Richwine and Biggs found that when public school teachers and private sector workers are compared objectively on the basis of cognitive skills -- rather than years of service or educational attainment -- the educators enjoy higher compensation -- contrary to the claims of union officials in public debate and in negotiations with school boards. [Numbers please - give me the average salary for each!]

"This is seen most dramatically when workers switch from non-teaching jobs to teaching jobs. Such a move typically results in a wage increase of approximately nine percent. 'Teachers who change to non-teaching jobs, on the other hand, see their wages decrease by roughly 3 percent. This is the opposite of what one would expect if teachers were underpaid,' Richwine and Biggs said." And Mr. Biggs, Andrew Biggs himself has written a piece asking, "Are public school teachers desperately underpaid?"

"Today, my co-author Jason Richwine and I will be releasing a new study on public school teacher pay and holding an event at AEI. It’s interesting stuff that’s worth hearing about in person, but here’s the short story. Salaries: Public school teachers receive lower salaries than similarly-educated private sector workers; this leads many to conclude, as Education Secretary Arne Duncan did, that teachers are 'desperately underpaid.' But these credentials-based comparisons are dicey when a single occupation (teacher) generally holds a single type of degree (bachelors or masters in education). Research we cite shows that education is, to put things bluntly, among the easiest college majors -- teachers enter college with below-average SAT scores but earn far higher GPAs than people majoring in history, chemistry, or other subjects. That skews the numbers."

The bottom line with this is that it's another piece of conventional wisdom that has now been stood on its head. That compared to others, public school teachers are desperately underpaid. They're not. They make more than private sector workers, and that's becoming accurate to say about every public sector versus private sector job. The average public sector employee makes almost twice when you factor benefits into the picture what a private sector person makes. Now, some of you might say, "So what, Rush. I thought you were for everybody doing well." Oh, I am, don't misunderstand. But private sector people are the ones who are paying the public sector people. That becomes a problem.

When the people paying earn only half of the people who are being paid by them that's not gonna work out. Now, a good deal of the revenue from schools comes from property taxes, you know, the homes and businesses of people who never pay their fair share, many of whom don't have children living at home. What does this money pay for? Public sector union teachers, administrators and their facilities and all part of a near monopoly that turns out ill-educated students. That's what the scores say, that's what business owners say, they all agree. Yet despite these results, these greedy property owners who are derogatorily called the 1%, they're dutifully paying their property taxes without so much as a thank-you.

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