No longer highest paid teachers
Teachers in California no longer earn, on average, the most of any state in the nation. New York has taken over that distinction.
California has the second highest student to teacher ratio in the nation (20.9:1), next to Utah’s 21.4. And its spending per student has fallen two notches to 43rd in the nation.
These are some of the statistics from the National Education Association’s annual report Rankings and Estimates for 2010. There aren’t many surprises, given the state’s fiscal mess. And since most of the data comes form the 2008-’09 year, figures on school spending will likely deteriorate, relative to the rest of the nation, over the next two years.
Here are some of the interesting stats:
- Per student spending: California’s $8,322 per student was $264 lower than in 2008-09 and 86 percent of the national average of $10,190. But proving that money alone won’t bring high achievement, the District of Columbia led the nation in spending at $17,638 – more than double California’s spending – followed by Rhode Island at $17,289. Utah spent the least: $5,912.
The NEA uses straight, unadjusted dollars. Education Week’s per student spending figures, which are most often cited in California, is regionally adjusted, which is why California bumps around the bottom, between 45th and 48th. But the NEA’s 43rd should be worry enough.
- Teacher salaries: Despite a drop on overall education spending last year in California, teacher salaries increased an average of 3.5 percent to $68,093. But New York’s average salary jumped 5.5 percent to overtake California; average salary in the Empire State: $69,118. The national average last year was $54,319.
- Capacity to spend: In 2006-07, before the recession walloped California, state residents spent $14 per $1,000 in personal income on K-12 and higher education. That was only 45th in the nation – an indication that Californians can and should be willing to spend more on schools. The highest, in Hawaii was 60 per $1,000 in personal income.
- Other priorities: California was third in the nation in local and state spending on prisons and corrections: $345 per capita; third in police and fire protection ($558 per capita) and 11th in spending on health and hospitals ($772 per capita).
- Taxation: California was 14th in the nation in terms of local and state taxes per $1,000 of revenue, at $114. The income tax revenue per $1,000 income tax was 5th highest in the nation but revenue from the property, as a result of Proposition 13, ranks 35th in the nation per $1,000 of personal income. These numbers came from 2006-07, the latest available.
The archives of The Educated Guess include a graph that helps put California school spending in national context, visually. California is VERY different from the rest of the US.
http://educatedguess.org/blog/2010/02/17/full-circle-funds-rx-for-schools/#more-1281
California’s low relative investment in education is strongly connected to the Prop13/Serrano change from community-based funding of schools to state-apportioned school budgets. To reverse this trend equitably will require community funding empowerment (local taxing authority) paired with a power-based equalization strategy (matching funds for low-wealth districts). This is a key element of the EACH Approach.
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John 14% of personal income on K-12 and higher ed? That is twice as high as I have ever seen. That would make such expenditures north of $238 billion. Are you sure? John Mockler
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Mr. Camp,
Could you explain what this EACH Approach is to those of us looking in from the outside?
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Mr. Mockler,
$14 is 1.4% of $1000.
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Ya, know what? Nobody ever said “money alone” was going to be a cure all for the schools. This is a distortion of Coleman’s finding’s that dollars expended at schools wasn’t the most important factor in determining student achievement: income and education levels of parents were the most important factors. The obvious conclusion is, improve the income and education levels of parents via a living wage and improved social services, health care, and affordable housing, and the next genration will begin to close the “achievement gap.” But, yikes, that means a Marshall Plan level of funding and committment to communities of color (primarily) and the dreaded “tax” word. Can’t have that. And then there’s the Washington DC canard. Ever look at the drug/violence stats on DC? Also, money follows students who are poor and learning handicapped. DC has loads of them. One of the best recent books on education policy is Organizing Schools for Improvement (Univ of Chicago. It detail how schools of superficial similarity can be very different in performance because of differing levels of “social capital.” DC has little of the social capital. When you look at the OECD data on poverty in the US the “achievement gap” becomes the all to obvious and logical outcome. We have a public education system tied to the economic disparities described by Coleman in the 60s. As the health care debate revealed trying to mediate those disparities will get the lunatics screaming socialism.
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Gary: I certainly haven’t said more money isn’t needed for California schools. Quite the contrary. As for Washington, D.C., what that district needed wasn’t a Marshall Plan but a superintendent like Michelle Rhee (minus the grandstanding).
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The average salary is not the only relevant measure; each person cares about their specific salary and the prospects for its increase. Your comments regarding funding per student (and other California data) are erroneous; the California data for 2008-2009 to which you were comparing was only released a few weeks ago. The data for 2009-2010 is unknowable until after the fiscal year ends, but your comment regarding prospects for this year and the next two years is sadly too prescient. In any case, relevant data for California school funding and teacher salaries in 2008-2009 is the following. 546 elementary districts had a total enrollment of 1,192,000 and average funding of $9,055 per student. The average salary for the 55,900 teachers in the 396 districts that posted salary data is $66,283; salary data is not known for the 1,800 teachers in the other 150 districts. 78 high school districts had a total enrollment of 567,000 students and average funding of $10,175 per student. The average salary for the 24,300 teachers in the 77 districts that posted salary data is $70,613; salary data is not known for the 15 teachers in the district that did not post salary data. 323 unified districts had a total enrollment of 3,087,000 students and average funding of $9,162 per student. The average salary of the 141,400 teachers in the 300 districts that posted data is $67,166; salary data is not known for the 2,450 teachers in the 23 unified districts that did not post data. A mere 11 unified districts had a total enrollment of 1,314,000 students and average funding of $10,893 per student. The average salary of the 66,319 teachers in these districts is $65,440. Further, there are six communities in the state that have common administrative districts; the total enrollments of these districts are 78,900 students. The average funding per student was $9,540 and the average teacher salary was $71,416 for the 3,764 teachers in these districts. Of some significance is the observation that the student teacher ratios and the teacher experience levels are not uniform across all groups of districts. The elementary districts with salary data have a student teacher ratio of 20.714 and average teacher experience of 12.97 years; the other elementary districts have a student teacher ratio of 18.445 and average teacher experience of 12.03 years. The high school districts with salary data have a student teacher ratio of 23.306 and average teacher experience of 12.90 years; the other high school district has a student teacher ratio of 22.9 and average teacher experience of 15.7 years. The 300 unified districts with salary data have a student teacher ratio of 21.495 and average teacher experience of 13.22 years; and the 23 unified districts without salary data have a student teacher ratio of 19.678 and average teacher experience of 13.72 years. The 11 large unified districts have a student teacher ratio of 19.821 and average teacher experience of 12.39 years. The common administration districts have a student teacher ratio of 20.956 and average teacher experience of 15.01 years. Note that the two groups of districts with the highest average teacher salaries, high schools and common administration districts, have a high student teacher ratio and high level of average teacher experience, respectively. The lower average salaries in the 11 large unified districts are coincident with both a low student teacher ratio (19.821) and a low average teacher experience (12.39 years). Remember, in California school districts are funded based on average daily attendance (ADA), not student enrollment. Are school districts in other states funded under the same limitations? Do you have a guess as to which group of districts has the most students on the bottom end of the achievement gap? Do you have any idea what the highest teacher salaries offered look like? Do you know what school districts are spending for health benefits? (BTW, the figure referenced in the February 17, 2010 blog in one of the comments is a distortion–the circle for California is displaced downward from where it should be. The data for this figure also relates to 2007-2008; go to the NEA website and actually look at the tables.)
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Thank you, TomC, for all the stats. Bottom line: Elementary districts generally get less ADA and pay less in salaries. High school districts get the most and generally pay more. As for which districts pay the most and the least, go here to find out. It’s not always districts with high-income families paying the highest salaries. As for the future, many of the best teachers would be better off if districts and unions agreed to drop pay by years worked and degrees held. Average salary would remain the same — maybe even be raised — under a performance-based system. My bet is the taxpayers would be only too willing to support that.
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John, did you oppose pay and job security based on seniority as a Newspaper Guild activist when you worked at the Mercury News? If so, that was certainly out of step with the philosophy of your fellow Guild members. If not, why do you take a different view when it comes to teachers?
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Comparing the The Guild and the CTA would be like comparing the United Farm Workers and the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn — the prison guards union. Yes they’re both unions, but one has a lot of coercive power; the other has struggled to survive. A very different dynamic.
At the Mercury News, seniority counted only one-quarter among factors when it came to layoffs, which occurred too frequently in the past decade. And yes, I supported that. Too many good, dynamic young writers would have been let go if it had been based on seniority alone. In that respect, parents and newspaper readers had a lot in common.
My perspective may not have been representative of veteran journalists. But then, I don’t believe many heads of teachers unions well represent the interests of their younger members. The Guild has been more progressive and flexible, under the circumstances, than the CTA.
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Linda Perlstein of the Education Writers Assn. wrote a blog post about how the press compulsively uses the adjective “powerful” before any mention of any teachers’ union. Even though that’s intended as a pejorative, which is why I accuse the mainstream press of mass, if mindless, teacher-bashing, it probably does have a little tendency to make it so. (In the same way, the frequent, mindless press parroting of the claim that Prop. 13 is the “third rail of politics” unfortunately tends to make THAT so — yet in truth, a very small number of voters even know what Prop. 13 is!)… However, if teachers’ unions were ACTUALLY powerful, it seems like teachers would be paid decently and wouldn’t be under constant attack from all sides. But also, John, you didn’t answer the other part of my question — did you also oppose pay step increases based on seniority in the Guild contract?
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Don’t get me wrong. The Guild negotiated an excellent contract for Merc employees, including step increases but primarily good benefits, when times were good. I appreciated that and the efforts of the Guild’s leadership. But the paper also hired people above scale and paid merit raises. That hybrid is a good model for teachers. Many employees, including myself, were paid above scale and therefore could move to and live in the Bay Area.
The adjective “powerful” is not a misnomer for the CTA. It’s under attack because it’s clinging to the wrong labor model, and a factory-style pay scale that doesn’t treat teachers as professionals. If the union wants more public support — and more public money — change it. I’d be the first to back that effort.
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John:
The “grandstanding” is the sum total of real performance for Michelle Rhee. She is pumped by foundations, corporatists, and sensationalistic media because she is the last and gasping example of the effort to scapegoat teachers, impose iron fisted management, and “firing” your way to improved achievement. Close analysis of scores in her district show results barely exceed random chance. Live by data, die by data. I don’t expect her to be around much longer.
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CarolineSF: Do you call *average* salaries of 56K-70K (depending on the type of district), with somewhere between 25%-30% benefits on top of that, plus relatively rich retirement package, “indecent” (”would be paid decently” you wrote)? Just wondering. I am sure some involuntarily retired Silicon Valley types would also be interested to know.
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Yes, 70K is lower-middle-income here in San Francisco. As an anecdotal example, it’s considerably less than my husband was making as a San Francisco Chronicle reporter before the Chronicle combusted — and news reporting is a famously low-paying profession in this area (or was, when the profession still existed). Among our professional friends (high tech, doctors, lawyers, nonprofit execs) we’ve been kind of consistently the poor folks — and again, that’s making quite a bit more than teachers make. … Also, teachers are required to have more education credentials than newspaper reporters are required to have (given that in our time newspaper reporters have been generally expected to have a college degree) — and teachers are required to do continuing education, which is not even a remote consideration to newspaper reporters. Also, since my husband became a teacher after the Chronicle combusted (taking a big pay cut, of course), now he knows firsthand what an enormously more challenging job that is — and I hear it secondhand, daily. And while it’s true that everyone loves to bash the media, newspaper people get bashed nowhere near as constantly and viciously as teachers do, and certainly not threatened, punished, and blamed and shamed for societal pathologies beyond their control. And how come nobody seems to take me up on my suggestion that reporters’, editors’ and especially editorial writers’ pay be tied to newspaper circulation and profits?
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So for reporters and editors you do support pay increases based on seniority, but are you saying you do or do not support pay increases based on seniority for teachers? This comment of yours sounds like a pretty clear statement that you don’t:
“…many of the best teachers would be better off if districts and unions agreed to drop pay by years worked and degrees held.”
So, are you saying that compensation should be based on seniority for journalists and not for teachers?
You claim the adjective “powerful” is apt for the CTA, but you didn’t even try to refute my point that an actually powerful union would win its members adequate pay and professional respect. So by what standard IS it powerful? (Unless one shares Mr. Wurman’s charmingly antiquated notion that $70K — which is unusually high for a teacher — is ample.)
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It’s very clear what I said. Journalists and teachers, as professionals, should be paid primarily based on merit. The union scale provided minimum step increases for new employees, anywhere from two years to six years. That was great for young reporters, and I would applaud that for new teachers. But that shouldn’t exclude additional bonuses and raises based on merit. And it didn’t at the Mercury News.
As for $70 K: State payments to districts should take into account regional costs of living. What works in Fresno doesn’t work in San Francisco or San Jose. But try and get the CTA to agree to that concept. Good luck.
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I don’t get the comment about the CTA not agreeing to the concept of differentiated pay depending on cost of living. Teacher contracts are negotiated by union locals with individual districts, not by some state union entity. In my district, the United Educators of San Francisco negotiates directly with the San Francisco Unified School District — statewide CTA officials are not involved. Once again: it is a fad to blame teachers’ unions for the woes of public education. It is unfounded and invalid. As Diane Ravitch points out, our nation’s Right-to-Work, the ones with no unionization or weak unionization and thus the ones that can fire at will, pay what they want etc., are consistently the states with the LOWEST academic achievement. The state with the consistently HIGHEST academic achievement, Massachusetts, is a strongly unionized state. Discuss and explain, please!
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The Governor’s Commission on Education Excellence and others have recommended regional cost variations in paying districts for each student enrolled — ADA — to account for different costs of living. It makes sense for obvious reasons. CTA has opposed this, because it pits locals in one region against another.
It has nothing to do with locally negotiated contracts or Diane Ravitch.
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Hurray! Florida Gov. Crist vetoed the Thrasher bill that would have launched a direct, devastating attack on teachers, public education and students.
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I did an interesting little comparison of academic achievement in Right-to-Work states vs. what some call Forced Unionism states. I used one little gauge: the cut scores for National Merit semifinalists, based on PSAT scores for 11th-graders. Those scores vary state by state, based on whatever is the 99th percentile in that state. Average cut score of Right-to-Work states: 208.4545. Average cut score of Forced Unionism states: 213.6897. This would seem to show conclusively that higher academic achievement correlates with higher teacher job security. Bring on the Forced Unionism! A blog post with details and links: http://rdsathene.blogspot.com/2010/04/is-firing-bad-teachers-really-key-to.html
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