Overcoming the Teaching Penalty (First in a Series)

When my early thoughts of becoming a teacher first started nudging me, I resisted. I admired some of my teachers, but to be honest, the income level was a big deterrent. As time passed during my senior year in high school, and some of my friends were thinking of being lawyers and doctors and architects, I was increasingly considering, with a high degree of consternation, becoming a teacher. I knew that becoming a teacher meant giving up the ability to make more money in other professions. What I didn’t know was that teachers are in essence penalized for their career choice.

Don’t misunderstand me. I have yet to meet an educator who decided to step into the business of opening up the world of knowledge to children because of the money. Teachers are teachers because they are passionate about teaching, about learning, about their subject matter, but most of all, about their students. Not one of them expects to get rich. They expect to get paid fairly for an increasingly difficult job. However, over the past decade, as the demands on educators have increased, teacher salaries have fallen further out of step from equally educated peers with comparable jobs.

The Economic Policy Institute recently published a study entitled The Teaching Penalty: Teacher Pay Losing Ground. In short the study concludes that not only do teachers make less than other professions, a study wasn’t required for that, but that over time teachers have been falling further and further behind comparably educated people in the US. Furthermore this penalty has been worse for women and those who’ve made teaching their lifetime career.

Here are some results from that study:

• Public school teachers in 2006 earned 15% lower weekly earnings than comparable workers. A gap in earnings that grew by 1% since the original study was done in 2003.

• From 1979 to 2006, teachers disadvantage in weekly earnings relative to comparable workers grew by 13.4 percentage points, with most of the erosion (9 percentage points) occurring in the last 10 years. In other words, teachers are falling behind at an accelerating rate.

• US Census data show that in 1960 female teachers had a wage advantage of 14.7% over other comparably educated women. Yet by 2000, that advantage had turned into a 13.2% wage disadvantage. A slide of 28 percentage points.

• Teacher's weekly wages were nearly on a par with those in comparable occupations in 1996 but are now 14.3%, below that of comparable occupations.

• If we take relative compensation data through the 1990s and break it down by age, nearly all of the increase in the weekly earnings gap between teachers and comparably educated and experienced workers occurred among mid-and senior-level teachers. Early career teachers (age 25-34) experience roughly the same wage disadvantage today as in 1990.

• In 15 states, public school teacher weekly wages lag by more than 25%. In contrast, there are only five states where teacher weekly wages are less than 10% behind. and no state where teacher pay is equal or better than that of other college graduates.

Even this brief summary offers a lot to think about. The one ray of light in the report is that benefits have helped ameliorate the wage gap when considering total compensation. While the weekly wage gap has grown by 15%, when benefits are considered as part of a total compensation package, teachers have only fallen behind by 12%. Yet, if like me, you’re a lifer, the results of the study are at best discouraging. What is clear is that, for the political leaders that make decisions on the future of education and the labor unions that represent teachers in our state and nationally, there are no simple solutions. Simplistic solutions like merit pay or performance-pay are no more than political sound-bites that, like “No Child Left Behind,” “Homeland Security” and “The Patriot Act” are nothing more than misnomers intended as tools of deception, a cloak for supplanting real improvements in education with a conservative agenda that advances the social goals of a few and the financial benefits of the privileged.

Teacher compensation is a hot potato issue these days, for political leaders, school boards and teachers unions. Nevertheless, it’s one that must be discussed soberly and honestly. And lets engage in that dialog by accepting that teachers’ incomes are below the average of comparably educated people and that there is no denying they are falling further behind. Over the next few weeks I’ll be digging more fully into the EPI report and the topic of teacher compensation. I’ll try to show all sides of a variety of proposals and I acknowledge that my 20 years as an educator may color my conclusions. Yet I intend to back up these views with what at time seems in short supply when it comes to the debate about the future of education: reason.

I welcome your suggestions and thoughts as we continue a discussion about shaping the future of education.