Summers off, big compensation - Fat City, right?

George Takei (of Star Trek fame) recently posted an image on his facebook page that says: Teaching - We're not in it for the income; We're in it for the outcome.

This, of course, drew many murmurs of agreement from teachers, as well as the predictable dissent from those who assert that teachers are overpaid, get too much time off, enjoy the protection of powerful unions, have tenure, etc, etc. I've already talked about tenure a bit, so I want to say a word about salary.

One pundit offered the following (and I paraphrase, slightly): "Teachers in Wisconsin make $89k per year on average, and still went on strike for better pay and benefits. That's greed at it's (sic) worst!"

Quick! Grab the torches and pitchforks!!!

Or maybe not.

My first thought was that I live in one of the best school districts in Illinois and our average teacher salary isn't anywhere NEAR that high. Smelling a rat, I did some Googling. Turns out that the average teacher's salary in WI is about $50k. The $89k figure apparently came from Fox News anchor Eric Bolling who was interviewing a Democratic Representative on his show in February of 2011. Bolling was stirring outrage by comparing teachers salaries (including benefits) with the private-sector average which he put at $48k (salary plus benefits). I know what you're thinking:

if DataSource = FoxNews then EndOfConversation;
else Continue;

And I'm usually with you on that since I value quality data. But in this case, a little more reading puts things in perspective. First, Bolling's numbers were off. His estimate of teacher compensation was too high and his estimate of private sector compensation was too low (no surprise there, based on my own experience). Furthermore, when you compare average teacher compensation with average compensation of professionals with similar career requirements (education level, for example) rather than just comparing it to the average salary of the entire population, you find that teachers are actually making less than their private sector counterparts. Here's a study done by Boston College that compares private and public sector compensation, including benefits. And while public benefits tend to be better, they still don't close the compensation gap brought about by the difference in salary. So if you want to complain about teacher compensation, you can complain about the benefits relative to those offered in the private sector. But be careful: if you're successful in that argument and have even a modicum of intellectual honesty, you'll then have to argue for higher teacher salary to compensate.

My likely salary as a teacher will be less than half of my current, private-sector salary. So no, teachers aren't in it for the income.

'But you get your summers off...'

Great topic for another entry.