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The myth of the teacher pay gap?

nationalaffairs.com

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Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#161

Post by tptacek »

mcguire wrote: post #123
tptacek wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that matter? If we're talking in terms of annual salary, the fact that they "don't get paid" over the summer is irrelevant; it's just the same amount of money distributed on a weird schedule, isn't it? All things being equal, you'd rather have the $60k job that had "an unpaid summer off" than the $60k job where you got paid all summer, right?

At least the graph in the article is "adjusted" for the 10-month work year. Typically in such discussions, that would mean they multiplied teacher salaries by 12/10 to make them "comparable" to other professions. Your $60k job is actually a $50k job with an unpaid summer off.

Are you sure about that? When the Washington Post says that CPS teachers make >$70,000, I'm reasonable sure (but not 100% sure) that's their actual annual compensation. When my kids old school district reports high-school teachers make $110,000, I know for a fact that's their annual comp, not something normalized to their "working months".

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#162

Post by j4kp07 »

humanrebar wrote: post #141
SamuelAdams wrote: post #23

Why not just go directly to the source? https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#25-0000 Secondary School Teachers: annual mean wage: $64,230 If we zoom in on a particular type of teacher, you get ranges: Middle school teachers https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes252022.htm bottom 10% earn 39k or less. bottom 25% earn 46k 50% earn 58k 75% earn 74k 90% earn 93k Based on these metrics, it seems like a fine occupation…

It didn't feel good as a teenager to hear teachers complain about education levels, workload, and salary when my intelligent and hard-working parents made less, worked as much, and had much less employment certainty.

Teachers complaining about workload and salary seems to be a right of passage.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#163

Post by idiot900 »

09bjb wrote: post #131
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #114

> (2) Annual wages have been calculated by multiplying the hourly mean wage by a "year-round, full-time" hours figure of 2,080 hours; for those occupations where there is not an hourly wage published, the annual wage has been directly calculated from the reported survey data. See, this is where things go wrong. So they've got mean wage figures which are constructed both on a fact (hourly wage) and an assumption (work…

n=2 now. My wife works a 1.0 FTE that the district rates as 1.6 to 1.8 FTE (seven classes per day). She works 50h / week at the absolute minimum.

Averaged across the entire year, or only during the school year?

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#164

Post by jacobolus »

jseliger wrote: post #158
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #114

> (2) Annual wages have been calculated by multiplying the hourly mean wage by a "year-round, full-time" hours figure of 2,080 hours; for those occupations where there is not an hourly wage published, the annual wage has been directly calculated from the reported survey data. See, this is where things go wrong. So they've got mean wage figures which are constructed both on a fact (hourly wage) and an assumption (work…

Issue is that BLS data consistently shows teachers working 40 hours per week or less. For example: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf (PDF). Anecdotes consistently run one way, while data consistently runs another.

> On average for all days of the week, teachers worked 18 fewer minutes per day, and did household activities—such as housework, cooking, lawn care, or financial and other household management—12 more minutes per day, than all other full-time professionals.

This analysis would be a lot more useful if broken down by demographic categories, such as gender, marital status, age, and number/ages of children.

The demographic profile of teachers is pretty different than e.g. accountants or lawyers or engineers.

It would also be useful to break this down by salary bracket.

Anecdotally, my mother, a career primary-school teacher, worked 60+ hours/week most weeks (while school was in session; her preparation/cleanup took also took a couple full-time weeks out of every summer vacation, but the rest of the summer vacation she could travel etc.) for several decades. Much harder than most of the much-better-compensated other white-collar professionals I know.

I’m also not sure if self-reported estimates on a survey are reliable measures of time spent. Again anecdotally, people’s self-descriptions of how hard working they are seems to depend substantially on personality / identity. It would be interesting to see some more direct measurements of time use.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#165

Post by sethammons »

skywhopper wrote: post #50

This article is a political screed, cherry-picking data to discredit a single source of data. There's no new useful data, or ideas about addressing problems in education. Its only purpose is to provide political cover for cutting education spending. Key detail: "Andrew G. Biggs is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute". Please remove.

I wish I could upvote you more. Nearly every paragraph and point is misconstruing data.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#166

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

negzero7 wrote: post #18
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's with a 3 month break every year. But still, dealing with kids every day is hard work. I know I wouldn't want to do it as a career. I thank those that do.

Along with the other commenters, the 3 month break isn't accurate. It tends to work out closer to about 7 weeks off. I do agree that I also could never do their job! (Source: My wife is a teacher)

>7 weeks off

not 12 weeks but 7 is still nice...

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#167

Post by JaimeThompson »

heyiforgotmypwd wrote: post #155

This is very an ignorant, biased and misleading article. 1) Not every educator is a teacher. Teachers are paid the most and have the best organized labor representation, while substitute teachers and T-A's are lucky if they get enough hours to qualify for benefits. 2) Not everyone lives in a rich area of a big city. Smaller communities typically don't have the tax base to pay livable wages. Cost of living maybe less,…

It comes from the American Enterprise Institute so it isn't exactly going to be friendly toward typical working citizens.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#168

Post by all_blue_chucks »

skywhopper wrote: post #50

This article is a political screed, cherry-picking data to discredit a single source of data. There's no new useful data, or ideas about addressing problems in education. Its only purpose is to provide political cover for cutting education spending. Key detail: "Andrew G. Biggs is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute". Please remove.

It's a criticism of publication from another political group. It's useful to be able to see the issue from both perspectives.

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#169

Post by DougPhillips88 »

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #52
tunesmith wrote: post #49

The entire opening of the article seems to be designed to take advantage of confirmation bias - the initial "there is no pay gap" is just an assertion, and then a bunch of therefores are built on top of it. Their entire argument seems to be based on "the pay gap calculation is dumb", but the problem is, even if that is true, that doesn't disprove that teachers are underpaid. The point about teachers having above aver…

The whole "article" is propaganda by a neocon think tank. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute

And this contradicts their data... how, exactly?

Re: The myth of the teacher pay gap?

#170

Post by DougPhillips88 »

skywhopper wrote: post #50

This article is a political screed, cherry-picking data to discredit a single source of data. There's no new useful data, or ideas about addressing problems in education. Its only purpose is to provide political cover for cutting education spending. Key detail: "Andrew G. Biggs is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute". Please remove.

Attacking the source and not the data is I guess all you can really do when you don't have the capacity to form an argument of your own.
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