High teacher pay still doesn't translate into achievement
Richard Burr
DetNews.com
Published January 31, 2007
A new study reinforces what has been true in Michigan and across the nation for a long time: High teacher salaries don't result in high achievement.
The Manhattan Institute study found that Metro Detroit teachers led the nation in hourly pay. Teacher union critics struck back by claiming annual salary data is a more accurate barometer, especially since teachers don't work for roughly a quarter of the year. But that time off still is "worth money," authors Jay Greene and Marcus Winters correctly argue, because teachers can use it for vacation or earning more money at another job. If you want an apples-to-apples comparison, hourly rates still sounds the best.
Any way you want to slice it, Michigan and Metro Detroit teachers make extremely good pay. Michigan teacher salaries have traditionally been in the top 5 in the nation, including in the last known surveys by the American Federation of Teachers (which mysteriously stopped its annual surveys but now is working on a new one) and the National Education Association.
When you consider Michigan and Metro Detroit's lower cost of living, the high salaries are particulary eyebrow-raising. Metro Detroit teachers make more than instructors in swanky San Francisco (which finished second to Metro Detroit in teacher wages). And Michigan is routinely within a couple of thousand dollars a year in teacher salary with much more expensive locales, such as Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.
What Michigan gets in return is average student performance (such as on the college ACT) and, increasingly, below-average performance, depending on the measures.
Put this together with economist Eric Hanushek's path-breaking research from a decade ago that found that more education resources don't result in better achievement, and the case for public education spending increases disintegrates -- unless it is accompanied by meaningful reform.
|