Family Taxpayers Foundation

What to know about Illinois Public School Teacher and Administrator Pay

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April 2008 update: Click here to read "Report Finds Teachers' Pay Is More than Adequate Across the Country" from the Heartland Institute's School Reform News.

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School researcher Jay Greene wrote last year about what he called “the teacher pay myth”:

"The common assertion that teachers are severely underpaid when compared to workers in similar professions is so omnipresent that many Americans simply accept it as gospel… But the facts tell a different story."

In a study released in January 2007, Greene reported that –

"When considering teacher pay, policymakers should be aware that public school teachers, on average, are paid 36% more per-hour than the average white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty and technical worker. They should be aware that the higher relative pay for public school teachers exists in almost every metro area for which data are available. Finally, they should be aware that paying public school teachers more does not appear to be associated with higher student achievement."

In Illinois, the Family Taxpayers Foundation has conducted a study of their pay increases and estimated pensions. What’s evident is that the rate of pay increases and the pension benefits far out-pace anything seen by private sector employees.

Part of the reason for this disparity has to do with the fact that public sector unions – in this case, the teacher unions – operate as a monopoly within a monopoly.

Click here to read “The Problem with Public Sector Unions.”

Click here to read “Public-Sector Unions Are a Major Obstacle to Fighting Waste, Abuse.”

Bill Zettler has penned a couple of excellent articles that help explain teacher pay and comparisons with the private sector. Follow these links:

Illinois teachers pay relative to other degreed white-collar workers

What $54,000 really means for a teacher

How much should a teacher make - a private sector equivalency calculation

Myth about teachers' salaries continues

Econ 101 regarding teacher pay

How does the price of a good, service, or labor itself get set? The Allegheny Institute outlined the basics in a report “Economics 101 for Teachers”:

“Basic economics shows us that when the price of a good or service in a normal marketplace causes suppliers to want to sell more than buyers are willing and able to buy at that price, then sellers will begin to bid the price down to the point where the amount supplied equals the amount demanded. Obviously, this is not happening with teacher [pay]…

Why? Because the market for teachers is controlled by monopolies, namely the unions that have exclusive rights to represent teachers in each school district.”

Click here to read the entire article: Economics 101 for Teachers.

Author John Stossel, in his book "Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity," wrote:

"I don't even know what the word underpaid means in a free society. No one is forced to become a teacher or to keep teaching if other opportunities arise. If teachers were paid too little, we'd have teacher shortages. We don't. In Missouri, for example, there are 25 applicants for every teaching job in elementary schools."

How Illinois public school teachers are paid

The next time the news media talks about how much a teachers contract is going to raise their pay, you need to realize that the across the board cost of living type of increases are only one of several ways a teacher can make more money.

Some pay raises are automatic; some they can give to themselves. Teachers are eligible for across the board pay raises, years of service increases, pay for taking on different duties like coaching, and they can raise their own pay by taking graduate level courses which bumps up their “credentials.”

(Click HERE and HERE to learn more about what they learn as they get all those salary increasing credits.) And then they are given arbitrary raises during their final years just to increase their already high pensions, a practice commonly referred to as salary padding.

School boards and superintendents should take back control of all wage raises, eliminating the methods teachers currently use to give themselves a raise. At the very least, a raise based upon additional education college credit should be rare, and should require pre-arranged permission.

Notice that none of these ways of increasing pay has anything to do with being a good teacher. The pay rate of public school teachers isn’t set like most other jobs – where people are paid according to how well they do their job. Free market competition sets the scale in the private sector. Public school employees benefit from the most politically powerful union in the nation (which scares the heck out of elected school board members and legislators), as well as the protection of a government monopoly.

Local school boards usually aren’t tough enough to resist the money grab made by the teachers unions and so yield to the laughable “it’s for the kids” argument.

How they should be paid: Our Proposal Regarding Teacher Pay

The teacher’s pay system needs to be reformed. Our current system does not reward for performance and its rigid structure penalizes the younger teacher by limiting pay increases for newer teaches while padding the salaries of those approaching retirement. It has precipitated costly and wasteful early retirement programs to induce the most experienced and highly paid teachers to retire.

A new pay system should be implemented and be based on traditional compensation goals.
Pay for teachers should address market forces.
Pay should be used to differentiate between different levels of responsibility, course difficulty and performance.
Pay levels should be used to efficiently allocate teaching resources. Not every teacher needs to be at the top of the scale.
Pay brackets based on job analysis should be applied as it is in industry and federal and state systems universally.
Currently, Illinois teacher pay does not address any of the above goals.

Market Forces

Teacher Unions negotiate pay using only teachers in the public school systems as the benchmark. This has resulted in the high average pay for teachers that have 10 years or more experience.

Professional corporate trainers, engineers, accountants, private school teachers, college professors and other professionals having similar responsibilities should be used for reference.

Differentiation

A teacher’s performance or workload is never utilized for pay increase in the current system. Pay levels are based upon a “grid” that uses only years of service and education credentials to determine pay level. There is preferential allocation of available funds to favored teachers approaching retirement.

Additionally, many unit school districts pay their elementary school teachers the same as the high school teachers. Traditionally, high school teachers have higher salaries than elementary school teachers do. Therefore, they may be overpaying their elementary school teachers and underpaying their high school teachers.

Efficient Resource Allocation

The distribution of experience level is uncontrolled by management. An allocation of senior teachers (mentor teachers) working with junior teachers is needed. Just as an army does not consist of all Generals, nor should our system allow teachers to “self promote” to the highest pay grade. They pay a bounty to get the high pay teachers out of the system because they believe they are paid more than they are worth. This problem should be solved rather than allowing it to continue on when it will cost more to fix.

How Could We Better Compensate Teachers?

Starting pay levels should be sufficient to attract qualified teachers. The increase in pay level that is based solely on years of service and college credits does not allow us to reward and appropriately compensate a teacher who excels early on in their career.

We must abandon the tie of a teacher’s pay to years of service and college credit. Implement job classifications for teachers within the system. Predetermine the number of teachers the District needs at each job classification. Assign teachers to the job classification according to their ability and job responsibility. Pay levels would be assigned to each job classification. Teachers would be paid according to their job classification. Increases would occur by advancing to a higher bracket that has openings.

One might illustrate job classifications to consist of…

K-8 Teacher

K-8 Senior Teacher

K-8 Mentor Teacher

High School Teacher

Senior High School Teacher

Mentor High School Teacher

Fellow

Assign Pay Ranges to the Job Classifications

The effect of this proposed compensation system is to allow management control over the quantity of teachers within a particular job classification. Additionally it allows teachers who excel to be reassigned to job classification that have higher pay according to their abilities and job responsibilities. It eliminates the self-promotion of teachers to higher pay levels that are not commensurate with their responsibilities.

Posted March 8, 2007.