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NPR Ed
Teachers make a lot of money ... for other people
Chelsea Beck
This week, we're digging into a question that was explored by the
Planet Money team: What do economists think about Democrats' new
education proposals?
Democratic presidential candidates have been watching a historic wave
of teacher strikes and protests sweeping the nation — and they want to
give teachers a raise.
Kamala Harris wants to spend $315 billion over 10 years to increase the
annual salary of an average teacher by $13,500. Joe Biden wants to
triple spending on a federal program for low-income schools and use
much of those funds for "competitive salaries." And Bernie Sanders
wants to work with states to set a minimum $60,000starting salary for
the nation's teachers.
But there's something missing from these proposals, and it reveals a
dramatic shift from a decade ago in how the Democratic Party wants to
fix education.
A $60,000 minimum in context
By global standards, American teachers are well paid. According to OECD
data, the starting salary of a typical American teacher in 2017 was
about $40,000. That's ninth of the 36 countries on the list. A $60,000
minimum would push the U.S. to the No. 2 position, behind Luxembourg,
which is way out ahead with a starting salary of more than $70,000.
How does teacher pay stack up domestically? According to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics, the average K-12 teacher makes above $62,000, which
is $10,000 more per year than the average of all occupations ($51,960).
The benefits are usually better than average, too.
But maybe those aren't the right comparisons. When we ask, "How much
should a teacher be paid?" what we're really asking is "How do we get
great teachers to choose to be a teacher and not, say, a lawyer
($144,230) or an engineer ($99,230) or something else?" Teaching
generally requires a college degree, sometimes more. That comes with
debt. And there's a growing pay gap between teachers and other
similarly educated professionals. Last year that gap hit a record.
Teachers make a lot of money ... for other people
Everyone can appreciate the value of a great teacher. But economists,
being economists, have tried to quantify exactly how valuable they are.
Eric Hanushek of Stanford's Hoover Institution, Barbara Biasi of Yale's
School of Management, Jonah Rockoff of Columbia Business School, and
John Friedman of Brown University have been leading researchers on this
front, and we spoke with all of them.
"I think teachers are way underpaid," says Hanushek. "I think we ought
to see a lot more six-digit salaries for the top teachers."
Many of the benefits teachers create are intangible: a lifetime love of
literature or mentorship that guides a child onto a better life path.
Yet some of the benefits aretangible. Hanushek went as far as
estimating a dollar amount. He finds that an effective teacher, who is
able to improve student test scores significantly, can increase the
lifetime earnings of a class of 20 by $400,000 compared to what an
average teacher would have been able to. Meanwhile, he finds, an
ineffective teacher does the opposite and lowers student earning
potential by a similar amount. Friedman and Rockoff, together with
Harvard's Raj Chetty, have done a few studies with similar findings.
They find above-average teachers deliver big income gains to their
classrooms as well as a host of other social benefits, like lower teen
pregnancy rates.
While being a good teacher means huge economic benefits for the people
they teach and society at large, teachers don't get to fully share in
all the benefits they create. In economic terms, that's a positive
externality, and it's a big reason why we should pay them more.
"If you look at future incomes of students who have the top teachers,
you see that there's a big bump that justifies very large salaries from
the top teachers," Hanushek says.
The economists we spoke to generally believed that we should tie
teacher pay to classroom performance and not simply implement
across-the-board pay increases like a $60,000 minimum salary. This is
the consensus position for economists. And there was a time, about a
decade ago, when it looked to be the consensus of leading Democrats and
Republicans as well. Not anymore. The proposals floated by Democrats on
the campaign trail don't mention pay-for-performance.
The schoolyard fight over teacher pay
A decade ago, it was increasingly accepted that one of the ways to
improve our educational system was to tie teacher pay to performance
and make it easier to fire bad teachers. The die-hard reformer and
union antagonist Michelle Rhee, then the chancellor of the D.C. public
schools, was appearing on the cover of Time magazine. The documentary
"Waiting For 'Superman'" was making waves. The Obama administration was
challenging teachers unions to drop their opposition to merit pay and
using its Race To The Top program to encourage states to adopt
innovative ed policies loved and championed by economists. Not now.
"There's definitely been a turn against a set of ideas in education
that we've been championing as effective," says economist John Friedman.
One problem with tying teacher pay to student performance is that
performance is hard to measure. Randi Weingarten, the president of the
American Federation of Teachers, has spent a lot of money and energy
fighting this movement over the past two decades. The American
Statistical Association and others have also questioned the reliability
of models used for measuring teacher impact on student performance.
Economists like Friedman, Rockoff, and Chetty have pushed back. They
say test scores shouldn't be the only measure of a teacher's
effectiveness, but they can say a lot about how well they perform in
the classroom.
Weingarten, who has worked closely with Sen. Sanders, likes the idea of
a $60,000 minimum teacher salary. "Making a middle class salary
matters," she says. "It starts people thinking, 'I can go into teaching
and pay my student loans. I can go into teaching and raise a family.' "
A recent working paper finds that during recessions, when
private-sector jobs shrivel up, more talented candidates get into the
teaching profession and make a significant improvement in student test
scores. While it might not be the most targeted way to improve
education, raising the floor of teacher pay could do the same thing in
good times.
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