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April 08, 2002
Fix It

The Washington Post reports that average teacher salaries "barely kept pace with living costs in the 1990's," with current salaries averaging $43,000. Predictably, the teacher's unions are pointing to this as evidence that teachers aren't fairly compensated.

As you might expect, they are wrong. What journalists routinely fail to do when reporting government school teacher salaries is adjust them for time actually spent working. While the rest of us spend most of our summers earning a living, teachers have that time free. Given their nine-month work periods, that average $43,000 salary amounts to $29.86 an hour, compared to $15.80 an hour for the average American worker. When one takes into account the considerably more generous benefits that government school teachers receive compared to private industry employees, the compensation gap widens.

The teacher's unions are fond of claiming, however, that their compensation should be compared to that of other professionals, and not to average workers. So let's consider their claim. If they want to be paid like other professionals, then it is only fair to point out three critical areas where they are currently protected from the market forces that most professionals face:

1) Responsibility for results. Machine press operators, waiters, engineers, and other professionals have to create value for customers. This performance not only determines their pay, but their continued employment. Public school teachers are, however, largely shielded from such responsibility. Great teachers aren't paid more than lousy teachers, and you can count on one hand the number fired for failure to educate.

2) Accountability for failure. If a hospital wrongfully harms someone, his family can seek compensation. But consider that one-third of America's students lack even a basic proficiency in math (as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam), or that one-quarter of students are passed along to high school without basic reading skills. Unlike other professionals, the teachers and administrators responsible for this educational malpractice are protected from parents who seek redress.

3) Competition. If a grocer provides bad produce, her customers are free to choose another store. But most parents with children in public schools have no such freedom, and efforts to give them a choice are aggressively resisted by the same teacher's unions who insist that they are like any other professionals.

The great secret of public schools is that some teachers are absolutely masterful. My wife taught in a big-city school plagued by problems that most schools will never see, yet her students scored in the 99th percentile on national math and reading tests. Many of us probably know a teacher like her, who proves that the common explanations for poor performance -- inadequate parent involvement, old books, no computers -- while worth addressing, are excuses.

Excellent education can and does happen, even in bad schools. But hiding in the same system are teachers who deserve to be unemployed. Many Americans are tired of throwing money at the government school behemoth in hopes that some of it actually reaches and motivates the core of teachers who are excellent at what they do. So before we consider raising teacher pay, we should demand the following conditions:

1) Pay for performance. If the kids don't learn, the teacher shouldn't get a raise. This is the world most of us live in, and if teachers want professional pay, they should be prepared to live up to professional standards. Bad teachers fear this; great teachers don't.

2) Pay tied to expertise. Many Education majors will admit that much of what they were taught is useless in a classroom. In fact, Education professors are often a university's worst teachers and academics, yet somehow we have made them the trainers of our children's teachers. This is nonsense. If we are serious about improving schools, then we should reward people with training in fields like science and literature who devote their careers to teaching our children. If this sounds a death-knell for Education as an academic discipline, then all the better.

3) School choice. It is simply wrong to tax parents for schools, yet prohibit them from choosing where and by whom their children will be educated. This un-American practice is only tolerated because too many of us have become complacent. Yes, choice means that some principals and teachers will go out of business while others gain customers. This is a good thing.

4) Real Discipline. It is unfair to saddle teachers with students who are out of control. If we want to improve school performance then we have to address this problem, be it through corporal punishment, institutions for unstable children, or criminal charges against parents whose children commit school violence. It's time to stop letting bad parenting ruin schools, and return them to the function of education rather than social rehabilitation.

Remember this the next time the "it's all about the kids" sloganeers look to reach into your pocket for still more government school spending. They like to call them "public" schools. I say we, the public, should reinvest that word with its proper meaning. If they really are our schools, then we ought to have a say in how to fix them.

So find out where your next local School Board meeting is going to be held, and give them a piece of your mind. This problem will not be fixed until enough people like us make so much noise that our legislators have to listen. So make some noise, before yet another generation of minds is squandered.

Power to the People, baby.

Posted by Woodlief on April 08, 2002 at 04:07 PM