Two surprising new reports show that hourly pay and benefits for public-school teachers are higher than the compensation received by other government employees or similarly qualified private-sector workers.
Teachers enjoy greater average hourly compensation in wages and benefits than any other group of state and local government workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The BLS also said teachers get more than twice as much in average hourly wages and benefits as workers in private industry.
Public primary, secondary and special education teachers are paid an average of $39.69 in wages and $16.90 in benefits, BLS reported. That combined $56.59 is double the $28.24 in average hourly wages and benefits paid to workers in private industry.
State and local government workers took in an average of $40.76 per hour in combined compensation.
No category of state or local government worker earned more in average hourly compensation than public-school teachers, though some specific job titles within those broader classifications carried more lucrative payouts.
The BLS determines average hourly wages and benefits by surveying employers. It defines the number of hours a teacher works by the number of hours the instructor is required to be at school.
Because teachers generally work fewer than 200 days per year, their hourly rate of compensation appears inflated.
For example, BLS determined that public-school teachers worked an average of 1,405 hours in a year while government employees worked an average of 1,823 hours.
For each hour at work, according to BLS, the average American public school teacher is paid $4.78 in retirement and savings benefits alone, compared with just $1.02 for the average private-sector worker.
Andrew Biggs, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said, "Teachers will push back that the [BLS] figures are based on their contract hours rather than the actual hours they work, including grading papers at home, etc. These are longer than their official hours, but not that much longer.
"Teachers self-report that they work around 43 hours per week, and a different BLS study that was designed to catch work at home concluded that teachers typically work around 40 hours a week.
"This difference will make them seem a little less well-paid relative to other state/local workers, but I doubt its enough to change the overall conclusions," Biggs said.
Jay Greene, an education researcher at the University of Arkansas, reported previously that full-time public school teachers work on average 36.5 hours per week versus 39.4 hours for white-collar workers (excluding sales) and 39 hours for professional specialty and technical workers.
Private school teachers work 38.3 hours per week, Greene's research found.
A separate report co-authored by Biggs and Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation delved deeper into the compensation gap.
Their study, "Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers," released last month, stated:
"Comparing teacher salaries to the salaries of similarly educated and experienced private-sector workers, and then adding the value of employer contributions toward fringe benefits, would indicate that public-school teachers are undercompensated. However, comparing teachers to nonteachers presents special challenges not accounted for in the existing literature."
For starters, Biggs and Richwine found that formal educational attainment, such as a degree acquired or years of education completed, "is not a good proxy for the earnings potential of school teachers."
"Public-school teachers earn less in wages on average than nonteachers with the same level of education, but teacher skills generally lag behind those of other workers with similar 'paper' qualifications," they asserted.
Biggs and Richwine found that:
- Workers who switch from nonteaching jobs to teaching jobs receive a wage increase of roughly 9 percent. Teachers who change to nonteaching jobs, on the other hand, see their wages decrease by roughly 3 percent. "This is the opposite of what one would expect if teachers were underpaid," the study said.
- Pension programs for public-school teachers are significantly more generous than typical private-sector retirement plans, which require higher employee contributions.
- Most teachers accrue lucrative retiree health benefits as they work, but retiree health care is excluded from BLS benefits data and thus frequently overlooked. While rarely offered in the private sector, retiree health coverage for teachers is worth roughly an additional 10 percent of wages.
The AEI/Heritage report concludes that "more generous fringe benefits for public-school teachers, including greater job security, make total compensation 52 percent greater than fair market levels, equivalent to more than $120 billion overcharged to taxpayers each year."
Neither report broke out specific numbers for Florida, where teacher compensation -- along with other public- and private-sector wages -- tends to be below national averages.
The average Florida teacher salary, not including benefits, declined 0.52 percent from $46,938 in the 2008-09 school year to $46,696 in 2009-10, according to the Florida Department of Education.
Florida public-sector workers, including teachers, sustained an effective 3 percent pay reduction beginning July 1 when they were required to start contributing that percentage of their salary toward their state pension.
Amber Winkler, a senior researcher at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, said, "Im of the general opinion that some teachers deserve to be 'overpaid' and others dont. The ones who do, move the needle on student improvement, take on more responsibilities or teach in needy schools.
"Unfortunately, our rigid salary scales in teaching dont allow for customization of pay."
Bob Sanchez, policy director at the Tallahassee-based James Madison Institute, calls unions a stumbling block to rational, real-world compensation systems that value competence over mere longevity.
"Many dedicated teachers spend countless hours 'off the clock' handling duties ranging from grading papers to sponsoring extracurricular activities in addition to their classroom duties. Others merely go through the motions, trying to hang on until retirement," Sanchez said.
"Unfortunately, because of teacher union pressure, teacher-compensation systems are often distorted in ways that defeat the goal of attracting the best and the brightest. Thats because most teacher union locals are dominated by veteran teachers who have played union politics to move up through the ranks."
In Florida, where teachers average 12 1/2 years of experience, Sanchez observed, "During the collective bargaining process, these union leaders push for rewarding seniority -- sticking around for years, regardless of effectiveness."
"These veteran union officials -- especially those nearing retirement -- often negotiate lavish pension deals to the detriment of offering more pay to beginning teachers.
"As a result, in comparisons of beginning salaries, potential teachers often drift off into other fields because they are dismayed when they discover that they wouldnt be making any 'real money' until theyd been teaching for 20-plus years," Sanchez concluded.
The Florida Education Association did not respond to Sunshine State News' requests for comment.
Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
