Readers are lighting up the comments section on this one regarding a comment made by "that one." (Note to John McCain: please try to remember your opponent's name next time.)
Even among well-informed Flypaper followers there is a great amount of disagreement regarding just how much teachers earn. So let me admit that it's a bit unfair to expect a presidential candidate to get these particular facts straight. In fact, Barack Obama is in the mainstream when he talks about a teacher making $30,000 to $35,000 a year. A recent Education Next article based on a national poll showed that most Americans think teachers average $33,000 per year, when the actual amount is $47,000.
Of course, as one colleague expressed to me, these figures don't include the generous pensions that teachers receive--pensions that are buffeted from the current turmoil in the market and which most private-sector employees no longer see.
I think we can all agree, however, that many teachers are underpaid. The key question is: which ones? It's going to be hard in the current fiscal climate (really, any fiscal climate) to dramatically raise salaries across the board. It would be smarter to raise pay strategically. In my view, starting salaries in most places aren't too bad--in the Washington area, new teachers get paid more than new Capitol Hill or think tank staffers--but the problem is that they quickly stagnate. Perhaps that's why we have more of a retention problem than a recruitment problem. Plus today's system provides incentives to get a master's degree in education, even though these don't relate to higher student achievement, and for teachers to hang on until the retirement payday, even if they have burned out long before.
So if I were king, I'd take Jacob Vigdor's advice and accelerate pay scales so that teachers with 5-10 years of experience would make a lot more money than they are now; pay more for teachers in high-need subjects or tough schools; pay more for teachers that are boosting student learning; and turn "defined benefits" pensions into 401(K)s. (This last point will make teachers howl, particularly with the stock market on its wild ride, but I'm sorry: most Americans face this sort of volatility in their retirement savings, and public employees should too.)
