Considerations on Cost Disease
Nominal teacher salaries may be reverting back towards the mean salary, but teacher compensation is not. Public school teachers in the US have a unique compensation structure:<p>1. They're salaried at a middle-class level (in a major metro like Chicago, the median teacher salary is $70k).<p>2. The get an extraordinary amount of time off. There are large public school districts where teachers have a contractual <i>maximum</i> of 190 work days.<p>3. Most importantly, many (most?) receive a defined-benefit pension plan. During the period of time this piece documents the teacher salary decline, virtually all competing jobs of every status lost defined-benefit pensions and switched to defined-contribution plans.<p>Further, the trend over the last 10 years has been towards tonier school districts paying spectacularly high teacher salaries. The perception in those districts is that a dollar spent on the schools (in any way) pays back more than a dollar in increased property values. So my kids at Oak Park River Forest high school have teachers --- not assistant principals, not coaches, not LD/BD specialists, just teachers --- making over $100,000. And bear in mind, if you normalize this back to a 50 week work year, that's closer to $140,000. With a defined-benefit pension.<p>And we're pikers compared to Buffalo Grove, which has several teachers making over $150,000.