How Much Are Teachers Paid?

Federal agency explicitly warned against methods used to

analyze data

EAST LANSING, Mich.— A new Manhattan Institute report

uses false and misleading calculations to erroneously assert that teachers are

better paid than a vast majority of white collar and professional workers.

The report, How Much Are Public School Teachers Paid?, by Jay Greene and Marcus Winters, uses hourly earnings data from the Bureau of

Labor Statistics (BLS) to compare public school teachers’ pay with that of other

white collar professionals despite the fact that the BLS has explicitly advised

users not to use hourly rates of pay in this context.

The report was reviewed for the Think Twice Think Tank Review Project

by economists Sean Corcoran of New York University and Lawrence Mishel of the

Economic Policy Institute.

The BLS National Compensation Survey (NCS) uses surveys to

assemble information on the average hourly pay for various professions. Greene

and Winters uncritically compare the reported hourly pay for various professions

and find, for example, that teachers’ hourly pay in 2005 was 36% more than that

of the average white collar worker. They also assert that teachers work fewer

hours than other white collar workers. They then put forward an analysis that

finds no correlation between their measure of teacher pay and student

achievement.

The BLS clearly warns against using the NCS data in this

context because the data doesn’t adequately reflect differences in paid or

unpaid time off among various professions. Certain professions have paid time

off included in their “hours worked” data, which artificially lowers their

calculated hourly wage. Teachers do not, which artificially raises their pay in

comparison to these other professions.

Furthermore, Mishel and Corcoran write, Greene and Marcus

understate the actual number of hours teachers work, further inflating their

hourly wage.

“In the end,” the reviewers write, “Greene and Winters

rely on a fundamentally flawed measure of relative teacher compensation, and

this defect in their study prevents any usefulness. It can add little if

anything to the public discussion of teacher pay and school policy.”

Find the complete review by Sean Corcoran and Lawrence

Mishel as well as a link to the Manhattan Institute report on the web at: http://www.greatlakescenter.org .

About Think Twice

The Think Twice project provides the public, policy makers

and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected think tank

publications. It is a collaboration of the Education Policy Studies Laboratory

at Arizona State University and the Education and the Public Interest Center at

the University of Colorado at Boulder and is funded by the Great Lakes Center

for Education Research and Practice.

Kevin Welner, the project co-director and editor, explains

that the project is needed because “despite their garnering of media attention

and their influence with many policy makers, reports released by private think

tanks can be of very poor quality. We don’t consider our reviews to be the final

word, nor is our goal to stop think tanks’ contributions to a public dialogue.

That dialogue is, in fact, what we value the most. The best ideas come about

through rigorous critique and debate.”

The mission of

the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice is to identify,

develop, support, publish and widely disseminate empirically sound

research on education policy and practices designed to improve the quality

of public education for all students within the Great Lakes Region.

Visit the Great Lakes

Center website at: http://www.greatlakescenter.or g

Contact:
Sean Corcoran (212) 992-9468 sean.corcoran@nyu.edu