Teacher Salaries, Again

Teacher salaries are always a hot issue. When I wrote a post about it yesterday I received several comments, including a few from my loyal reader Paul, who always has good things to contribute to my education posts.

Paul raises the excellent point, missed by most taxpayers, that teachers often receive two raises--one for moving up the experience ladder, and another annual increase on the base salary. So the base salary might be $32,000. But with each additional year there is a step increase. So a second year teacher might make $35,000, third year $37,000 and so on. In the case of Paul's district, he said that steps increase from 0-15 years, with another step at 20 and at 23.
That's fairly typical. It's important to understand that teacher salaries in most districts are structured just this way. As a result, teachers have a fairly low starting salary, but the pay catches up to many other professions after time. Eventually, for experienced teachers, the salary ends up being somewhat competitive. It's also important to remember that those steps are negotiated, as are the rates of increase at each step. It's a compromise between the board and the bargaining unit.

So when Paul says that teachers get a fairly large increase from year to year, he's right. For example, a teacher may get a 3% increase on the base salary, as well as a 3% increase. It has to be that way, or else the low starting salaries would also equate to a pretty low average salary for the entire profession. But in most cases, the average teacher's salary districtwide isn't going to increase by 6%.

That's because every year, teachers at the upper end of the scale retire, and are replace by teachers at the bottom end. And because the teachers at the top part of the scale don't see the same rate of increase as the teachers at the bottom of the scale.

The benefit of this system is that it rewards experienced teachers for staying in the district. That's a good thing. As in anything else, experience is important in teaching, especially when there is a need for some instructional consistency from year to year. Teaching is a hard job, and the hope of regular increases helps keep people in the profession when things get stressful.

The alternative, some say, is a system of merit pay. But whatever alternative, consider the following. I recently saw a figure of about$43,000 as the average teacher salary. Any salary structure is going to have to keep that average--unless you think the average teacher salary is too high. Obviously the teachers above the line--the most experienced--don't want a pay cut. And they aren't the teachers you want to get rid of.

So... how do you do it? Not an easy question to answer. Personally I think the system works fine, except, as I've said before, starting salaries need to go up a little to attract college students to the profession.

Now, I haven't even touched the issue of health care. The rates of increase for health benefits are much higher than rates of increase for salary. There's no solution to that locally. Health care is going up and up. Obama and Clinton have plans to deal with rising health care costs... you might want to vote for one of them in November.