Competitive teacher salaries: Free market-ifying public education

Public teacher compensation remains a hotly contested topic in California, several loud voices refraining that educators deserve a higher income. Under the proposed “Pay Teachers Act,” teachers would be guaranteed $60,000+/year, funded by local taxpayers. However, the average American teacher earns $68.85/hour (and in the SJUSD, $47/hr.), compared to the private sector’s $36/hr. Larry Sand proposes in Front Page Magazine that competitive, market-driven salaries are more logical than the current non-merit-based, across-the-board system.

According to Just Facts, in the 2020–21 school year, the average school teacher in the U.S. made $65,090 in salary, and received another $33,048 in benefits (such as health insurance, paid leave, and pensions) for $98,138 in total compensation.

Also, importantly, full-time public school teachers work an average of 1,490 hours per year, including time spent on lesson preparation, test construction, and grading, providing extra help to students, coaching, and other activities, while their counterparts in private industry work an average of 2,045 hours per year, or about 37% more than public school teachers.

All in all, with various perks included, a teacher makes on average $68.85 an hour, whereas a private sector worker makes about $36 per hour.

In the same vein, an earlier study by researchers Andrew Biggs and Jason Richwine showed that when healthcare and pension packages are included, teachers are paid more than other workers. They found that workers who switch from non-teaching jobs to teaching jobs “receive a wage increase of roughly 9 percent, while teachers who change to non-teaching jobs see their wages decrease by approximately 3 percent….”

A legitimate teacher salary issue is the way we pay teachers. Whereas private sector employees are paid via merit, teachers are part of an industrial style “step and column” salary regimen, which treats them as interchangeable widgets. They get salary increases for the number of years they work, and for taking (frequently meaningless) professional development classes. Great teachers are worth more – a lot more – and should receive higher pay than their less capable colleagues. But they don’t. Also, if a district is short on science teachers, it’s only logical to pay them more than other teachers whose fields are overpopulated. But, of course, stifling union contracts don’t allow for this kind of flexibility.

This article originally appeared in Front Page Magazine. Read the whole thing here.

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