Opinion Editorial | |
| Monday, December 21, 1998 | |
Teacher Pay Rises Even As Quality Declines |
Education is clearly a matter of great economic importance. According to a new Census Bureau report, education has an enormous impact on incomes: those with a college degree earned $40,478 in 1997 on average, while those with just a high school diploma earned $22,895. Furthermore, those with an advanced degree made $63,229, while high school dropouts earned just $16,124. Despite the importance of education to lifetime earnings, there is an almost universal feeling that the quality of education in the U.S. has slipped in recent years. In part, this is due to changes in curriculums--the "dumbing down" of textbooks, the reduction in emphasis on education outcomes in favor of raising students' self-esteems, changes in educational philosophies, such as the replacement of phonics with whole-word reading instruction, to name a few. But there is also a belief that the general quality of teachers has fallen, highlighted by the recent Massachusetts case where some 60 percent of aspiring teachers could not pass a simple certification test. Some have blamed the decline in teacher quality on changes in the labor force. In earlier years, teaching was one of the few professional jobs available for women. As a consequence, it attracted many highly intelligent females for whom this was the only available career option. But beginning in the 1960s, virtually every profession became open to such women. Now careers such as medicine, law and computers are more attractive alternatives for women who once went into teaching, thus lowering the quality of the pool of potential teachers. Of course, the teachers' unions have a simpler explanation: we just don't pay them enough. Pay more and teacher quality will improve, they say. The only problem with this theory is that teacher pay has been rising faster than most other jobs for years even as teacher quality has deteriorated. In 1980, the average elementary and secondary school teacher made 46 percent more than the average production worker. By 1997, teachers were making 57 percent more (see figure). Furthermore, empirical research has failed to find any correlation between teacher pay and teacher quality. This research is summarized in a recent book, "Teacher Pay and Teacher Quality" (Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research). In part, this is due to the nature of the market for teachers--pay tends to be the same for all teachers regardless of performance. This discourages the highly-qualified from entering teaching and draws the best teachers away into other, more lucrative jobs.v
In the end, the answer to improving the quality of education involves far more than just raising the pay for all teachers. Bruce Bartlett, senior fellow, National Center for Policy Analysis, December 21, 1998. Home | Support Us | All Issues | Social Security Debate Central | Contact Us |
