Executive Summary
Education policy discussions often assume that
public school teachers are poorly paid. Typically
absent in these discussions about teacher pay,
however, is any reference to systematic data
on how much public school teachers are actually
paid, especially relative to other occupations.
Because discussions about teacher pay rarely
reference these data, the policy debate on education
reform has proceeded without a clear understanding
of these issues.
This report compiles information on the hourly
pay of public school teachers nationally and
in 66 metropolitan areas, as collected by the
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in its
annual National Compensation Survey. We also
compare the reported hourly income of public
school teachers with that of workers in similar
professions, as defined by the BLS. This report
goes on to use the BLS data to analyze whether
there is a relationship between higher relative
pay for public school teachers and higher student
achievement as measured by high school graduation
rates.
Among the key findings of this report:
- According to the BLS, the average public
school teacher in the United States earned
$34.06 per hour in 2005.
- The average public school teacher was paid
36% more per hour than the average non-sales
white-collar worker and 11% more than the
average professional specialty and technical
worker.
- Full-time public school teachers work on
average 36.5 hours per week during weeks that
they are working. By comparison, white-collar
workers (excluding sales) work 39.4 hours,
and professional specialty and technical workers
work 39.0 hours per week. Private school teachers
work 38.3 hours per week.
- Compared with public school teachers, editors
and reporters earn 24% less; architects, 11%
less; psychologists, 9% less; chemists, 5%
less; mechanical engineers, 6% less; and economists,
1% less.
- Compared with public school teachers, airplane
pilots earn 186% more; physicians, 80% more;
lawyers, 49% more; nuclear engineers, 17%
more; actuaries, 9% more; and physicists,
3% more.
- Public school teachers are paid 61% more
per hour than private school teachers, on
average nationwide.
- The Detroit metropolitan area has the highest
average public school teacher pay among metropolitan
areas for which data are available, at $47.28
per hour, followed by the San Francisco metropolitan
area at $46.70 per hour, and the New York
metropolitan area at $45.79 per hour.
- We find no evidence that average teacher
pay relative to that of other white-collar
or professional specialty workers is related
to high school graduation rates in the metropolitan
area.
About the Authors
JAY P. GREENE, Ph.D., is Endowed Chair
and Head of the Department of Education Reform
at the University of Arkansas and a Senior Fellow
at the Manhattan Institute. He has conducted
evaluations of school choice and accountability
programs in Florida, Charlotte, Milwaukee, Cleveland,
and San Antonio. He has also recently published
research on high school graduation rates, social
promotion, and special education. His articles
have appeared in policy journals, such as The
Public Interest, City Journal, and
Education Next; in academic journals,
such as the Teachers College Record,
the Georgetown Public Policy Review,
and the British Journal of Political Science;
and in major newspapers, including the Wall
Street Journal, the Washington Post,
and USA Today. Dr. Greene is the author
of Education Myths (Rowman & Littlefield,
2005). Dr. Greene received his B.A. in history
from Tufts University and his doctorate in political
science from Harvard University.
MARCUS A. WINTERS is a Senior Research
Associate at the Manhattan Institute and a Doctoral
Academy Fellow at the University of Arkansas.
He has performed several studies on a variety
of education policy issues, including high-stakes
testing, charter schools, and the effects of
vouchers on the public school system. His op-ed
articles have appeared in numerous newspapers,
including the Washington Post, USA
Today, and the Chicago Sun-Times.
He received his B.A. in political science with
departmental honors from Ohio University in
2002 and an M.A. in economics from the University
of Arkansas in 2006.
Introduction
Education policy discussions often assume that
public school teachers are poorly paid. “Salaries
are too low. We all know that,” says First
Lady Laura Bush, expressing the consensus view.
“We need to figure out a way to pay teachers
more.”[1] Teachers’
unions consistently contend that their members
are under-compensated. “It’s easier
to earn more money with less stress in other
fields,” laments a representative for the
National Education Association.[2]
The problem is so severe, asserts Washington
Post columnist Richard Cohen, that teachers
ought to be exempt from paying income tax.[3]
Typically absent in these discussions about
teacher pay, however, is any reference to systematic
data on how much public school teachers are
actually paid. How much do they earn? How do
their wages compare with those of other workers?
Because discussions about teacher pay rarely
reference these data, the policy debate on education
reform has proceeded without a clear understanding
of these issues.
This report aims to fill that gap. We make
no judgments in this report about whether public
school teachers are underpaid or overpaid. Our
purpose is rather to facilitate a fact-based
approach to teacher pay, by shifting the focus
of policy discussions to systematic data.
Systematic data on teacher compensation are,
in fact, available. The U.S. Government’s
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collects and
reports hourly earnings for teachers and a host
of other occupations nationwide and in scores
of metropolitan areas. Yet, although previous
research has used BLS data to draw conclusions
about the proper level of teacher pay,[4]
no one has organized and reproduced those data
so that others can easily observe the information
and form their own interpretations. In this
report, therefore, we have aimed to collect,
organize, and make available teacher-pay data
from the BLS in an easily accessible format.
We have organized the results alphabetically
by metro area; by the amount of public school
teacher pay in each metro area; and by public
school teacher pay relative to that of other
workers.
In what follows, we report the facts on how
much teachers are paid, on average, nationwide
and in more than 60 metropolitan areas. We also
report how well teachers are paid relative to
other occupations with which they are grouped
by the BLS. Finally, we conduct some exploratory
analyses of the relationship between the relative
pay of public school teachers and student achievement,
as measured by graduation rates, to see whether
higher relative pay relates to higher student
achievement.
Other than our analyses of the relationship
between relative teacher pay and student achievement,
the data presented here are drawn entirely from
BLS reports.[5] All the
mean hourly earnings figures reported here are
for full-time workers and exclude the value
of benefits such as health care, life insurance,
and pensions. Almost all the earnings results
are as of 2005, but the specific year of data
collection for each result is indicated in the
tables.
How Much Are Public School Teachers Paid?
The BLS essentially asks employers to provide
information on the hourly earnings of employees
(exclusive of benefits) and the number of hours
worked during a week. The BLS also groups occupations
into blue-collar—industrial and manufacturing
jobs; and white-collar—mostly service and
office jobs. Teaching in elementary and secondary
schools is classified as white-collar. The BLS
further subclassifies white-collar occupations
into categories, including professional specialty
and technical; executive, administrative, and
managerial; sales; and administrative support
and clerical occupations. Public school teachers
are in the professional specialty and technical
worker group. Other occupations in that group
include engineers, architects, mathematicians,
computer scientists, biologists, chemists, physicians,
dentists, registered nurses, actors, athletes,
and airline pilots. (A list of occupations in
the professional specialty and technical category
can be found in Table
2.)
According to the BLS, the average public school
teacher in the United States earned $34.06 per
hour in 2005. (See Table
1.) The average white-collar worker (excluding
sales) earned $25.08 per hour, and the average
professional specialty and technical worker
earned $30.66 per hour. The average public school
teacher was paid 36% more per hour than the
average non-sales white-collar worker and 11%
more than the average professional specialty
and technical worker. Nationwide, public school
teachers earn more than the average workers
with whom they are grouped into categories by
the BLS.
The Detroit metropolitan area has the highest
average public school teacher pay among metropolitan
areas for which data are available, at $47.28
per hour. (See Table
1A.) The average public school teacher in
the San Francisco metropolitan area is not far
behind, at $46.70 per hour. The third-highest
average public school teacher pay is in the
New York metropolitan area ($45.79). The top
ten metro areas in terms of average public school
teacher pay can all be found in California,
Michigan, or the Northeast.
The lowest-average public school teacher pay
for metro areas with data available is in metro
Greensboro, North Carolina, with the mean hourly
earnings at $21.67. The Raleigh, North Carolina,
metro area is second from the bottom, where
public school teachers made $22.38 per hour
as of 2004. Orlando, Florida, had the third-lowest
average public school teacher pay, at $25.03
per hour. The ten lowest-paying metro areas
could all be found in the South or the West,
with three in North Carolina or South Carolina,
three in Texas, and one each in Florida, Oklahoma,
Arizona, and Alabama.
But these rankings are strongly influenced by
the different cost of living found in various
metropolitan areas. If we want to know how well
teachers are paid by metro area, it may be more
useful to look at the pay of the average public
school teacher relative to the average white-collar
or the average professional worker. The cost
of living in a metro area affects all types
of workers. So public school teachers are relatively
better paid if their pay is proportionately
higher than that of other workers in the same
metro area. In Table
1B, you can find metro areas ranked by the
ratio of the average teacher pay to the average
white-collar worker pay.
By this measure, metro Elkhart, Indiana, has
the highest-paid public school teachers because
the average public school teacher makes 87%
more than the average white-collar worker in
the same area. Metro Grand Rapids, Michigan,
has the second-highest public school teacher
earnings relative to white-collar workers, with
teachers making 80% more. Metro Louisville,
Kentucky, is third-highest, where the average
public school teacher is paid 79% more than
the average white-collar worker. The Detroit
metro area, which had the highest nominal public
school teacher pay, at $47.28 per hour, had
the eighth-highest pay relative to white-collar
workers, with teachers making 61% more than
white-collar workers.
Many of the areas with the lowest nominal pay
also had the lowest pay relative to white-collar
workers. In metro Raleigh, public school teachers
are paid 15% less than the average white-collar
worker. That gives Raleigh the distinction of
being the only metro area for which data are
available where the average public school teacher
makes less than the average white-collar worker.
Metro Greensboro and metro Charlotte, North
Carolina, were the next two in lowest pay relative
to white-collar workers, with public school
teachers making 1% and 4%, respectively, more
than white-collar workers.
But perhaps it would be better to focus on
the pay of public school teachers relative to
professional specialty and technical workers,
the subgroup of white-collar workers with whom
they are grouped by the BLS. (See Table
1C.) Nationwide, the mean hourly earnings
for public school teachers is 36% higher than
for white-collar workers and 11% higher than
for professional workers. In only one of the
66 metropolitan areas with data available were
public school teachers paid less than white-collar
workers. In 11 of 66 metro areas, public school
teachers make less, on average, than professional
specialty and technical workers. The highest-
and lowest-ranked metro areas in terms of public
school teacher pay relative to professional
workers are very similar to the highest and
lowest relative to white-collar workers. In
metro Louisville, public school teachers make
69% more than other professional workers; in
metro Raleigh, they make 29% less. In all the
nation’s largest metropolitan areas, public
school teachers make more than professional
specialty and technical workers. In metro New
York, they make 20% more; in metro Los Angeles,
23% more; and in metro Chicago, 12% more.
So that people have a better idea of what occupations
are included in the professional specialty and
technical workers category and how well public
school teachers are paid relative to those occupations,
we have prepared Table
2. It contains the mean hourly earnings
for all noneducational occupations in the professional
specialty and technical category as well as
public school teachers. Public school teachers
have higher earnings than 61 of these 85 occupations.
For example, editors and reporters earn 24%
less than public school teachers; architects,
11% less; psychologists, 9% less; chemists,
5% less; mechanical engineers, 6% less; and
economists, 1% less. Airplane pilots earn 186%
more than public school teachers; physicians,
80% more; lawyers, 49% more; nuclear engineers,
17% more; actuaries, 9% more; and physicists,
3% more.
Public school teachers also earn more than private
school teachers. (See Table
3.) Nationwide, public school teachers are
paid 61% more than private school teachers.
Information on the pay of private school teachers
by metro area has a fair amount of missing data
since there may have been insufficient samples
in many areas. For those metro areas for which
we have data, San Antonio, San Francisco, and
Minneapolis paid their public school teachers
more than twice as much as private school teachers.
In the Phoenix, Houston, and Raleigh metro areas,
private school teachers earned more than public
school teachers.
How Many Hours Do Public School Teachers
Work Per Week?
According to the BLS, full-time public school
teachers work on average 36.5 hours per week
during weeks that they are working. (See Table
4.) By comparison, white-collar workers
(excluding sales) work 39.4 hours and professional
specialty and technical workers work 39.0 hours
per week. Private school teachers work 38.3
hours per week.
In Table 4A, we
have ranked metro areas by the average number
of hours that public school teachers work. Public
school teachers in metro Grand Rapids, Michigan,
work the fewest hours per week among the metro
area for which we have data, at 32.6 hours per
week. In metro New York, public school teachers
work an average of 32.7 hours per week. And
in metro Los Angeles, public school teachers
work an average of 33.2 hours per week. The
highest reported workweek can be found in metro
Milwaukee and Amarillo, where public school
teachers work 40.0 hours per week. In metro
Portland, Oregon, the average workweek for public
school teachers is 39.8 hours.
Are Hours Worked Counted Properly?
BLS figures are supposed to include all
hours worked. As the technical appendix to the
National Compensation Survey describes it, “Because
salaried workers, exempt from overtime provisions,
often work beyond the assigned work schedule,
their typical number of hours actually
worked was collected.”[6]
Some may fear that the extra time that teachers
spend grading, preparing for class, and assisting
extracurricular activities is not included in
the BLS figures, but the BLS appears to include
all these activities in its work-hour calculations:
“Virtually all teachers worked from 30
to 40 hours per week, which included paid lunch
and rest periods, as well as preparation and
grading time if such activities were considered
by the school to be a part of the teacher’s
workday. Additional hours for extracurricular
activities were included only if considered
part of the regular work schedule.”[7]
The inclusion of lunch and rest periods in work-hour
calculations is more common for teachers: “[T]eachers,
more than the other groups, were the most likely
to have paid lunch as well as paid rest periods.”[8]
Teachers also report taking work home at high
rates: “Schoolteachers and instructors
(excluding college) especially were likely to
take work home, with 2.8 million—or about
half of all teachers—reporting such activity
in the May 2004 survey.”[9]
But other professionals also appear to take
work home at high rates: “Almost 30 percent
of workers in management, professional, and
related occupations reported working at home
in May 2004.”[10]
If any of this work at home, either by teachers
or other professionals, is considered by the
employer to be part of the actual hours
worked, it is included in the BLS figures. It
is possible that teachers, as well as other
professionals, put in some hours at home that
are not captured in these numbers, but those
hours would not be considered required for their
jobs and thus are not part of their paid employment.
But what if the BLS is wrong in how it counts
hours worked? Would that alter the earnings
comparisons between public school teachers and
white-collar and professional workers? To believe
that the BLS unfairly counts hours worked by
teachers relative to others, we would have to
believe that teachers spend more hours working
at home than do other white-collar or professional
workers. We would further have to believe that
those hours worked at home are not counted in
the BLS figures but really are required for
employment.
To test how much of a difference this type
of error might make in earnings comparisons,
let’s assume that public school teachers
work the same number of hours per week as do
white-collar and professional workers, rather
than the fewer hours reported. If we divide
the weekly earnings of public school teachers
by the 39.4 hours per week reported for white-collar
workers, teachers would still earn 26% more
per hour than do white-collar workers. If we
divide the weekly earnings of public school
teachers by the 39.0 hours per week reported
for professional specialty and technical workers,
teachers would still earn 4% more per hour than
do other professionals. That is, the higher
mean hourly earnings for public school teachers
are not simply a function of fewer reported
hours worked per week. Even if we assume that
teachers work the same hours as others, they
still have higher average pay per hour.
Why Not Look at Annual Earnings?
The simple reason for not looking at annual
earnings is that the National Compensation Survey
only reports information on an hourly and a
weekly basis, not on an annual basis. Since
we are trying to stick very closely to what
the U.S. Government reports, we do not attempt
to calculate annual earnings in this report.
More important, we do not report annual earnings
because any comparison between public school
teachers and other workers is complicated by
the fact that teachers typically are contractually
obligated to work nine months out of the year,
while other white-collar workers and professionals
are 12-month employees. All else being equal,
anyone working fewer months per year will have
a lower annual salary.
But that would be an apple/orange comparison.
One of the significant benefits available to
public school teachers is that they work fewer
weeks per year. Teachers can use that time to
be with family, to engage in activities that
they enjoy, or to earn additional money from
other employment. Whether teachers use those
free weeks to make additional money or simply
to enjoy their time off, that time is worth
money and cannot simply be ignored when comparing
earnings. The appropriate way to compare earnings
in this circumstance is to focus on hourly rates.
Is Higher Relative Teacher Pay Associated
with Higher Student Achievement?
In this section, we stray slightly from the
BLS data to report an original calculation.
We examine whether metro areas with higher public
school teacher pay relative to white-collar
or professional workers have higher student
achievement. Our measure of student achievement
is the metro area’s high school graduation
rate.[11] We rely upon
graduation rates because comparable test-score
data are not available for metro areas across
the United States; in our earlier work on graduation
rates, we developed a relatively reliable and
consistent measure of achievement.
In the regression model, we control for demographic
characteristics of the metro area, including
the percentage of students on free or reduced-price
school lunch, median household income, the percentage
of students who are disabled, and the percentage
of students who are non-Hispanic whites. In
addition, we include other factors that might
be related to student achievement, such as student-teacher
ratio, per-pupil spending, total student enrollment,
and the number of school districts in the metro
area.
The results of the analysis of the relationship
between public school teacher pay relative to
white-collar pay on high school graduation rates,
controlling for these other variables, can be
found in Table 5.
The same model but with public school teacher
pay relative to professional specialty and technical
worker pay can be found in Table
6. In neither model does relative teacher
pay have any effect on high school graduation
rates. Per-pupil spending and the student-teacher
ratio also have no effect on high school graduation
rates. Metro areas with a higher percentage
of white students have higher graduation rates.
And it appears that metro areas with fewer students
and more school districts have higher graduation
rates.
These results should only be considered as
exploratory. The analyses only examine 45 metro
areas, so they have relatively little statistical
leverage. The small sample helps explain why
the findings that are statistically significant
are barely so or are significant only with a
more relaxed standard than is conventional.
In addition, the model cannot control for several
other factors that may be related both to student
achievement and relative teacher pay.
While these results should be treated with
caution, they suggest that increasing the pay
of teachers relative to others in an area will
do nothing to increase student achievement.
Similarly, simply spending more on schools and
lowering class sizes doesn’t produce higher
achievement. But having more small school districts
in a metro area does enhance student performance.
With more numerous, small districts, families
can more easily choose among them to gain access
to desired districts. This easier access to
residential school choice increases competition
among districts for students and the revenues
they generate, which provides stronger incentives
to increase the quality of schools.[12]
Conclusion
Few education topics elicit as much passion
as teacher pay. In any discussion of this issue,
one is typically confronted with emotional testimony
about personal experiences of long hours and
meager pay for critically important work.
To be sure, there is some truth in these teacher
responses. Many teachers undoubtedly do devote
long hours, for what may seem far too little
pay, as they engage in the essential work of
educating future generations.
Yet the personal testimony of a number of teachers
as to their poor compensation is no substitute
for systematic data. If we want to have a productive
policy discussion about the appropriate level
of public school teacher pay, we have to start
with high-quality and systematic data—not
emotionally compelling personal stories.
As we stated at the beginning of this report,
we offer no opinions on the proper level of
pay for public school teachers. We are simply
offering facts, almost entirely obtained from
an agency of the federal government, that we
believe ought to be included in any policy discussion
about teacher pay. Before debating whether public
teachers are gravely underpaid and deserve special
subsidies such as tax breaks, we first need
to have a clear understanding of what teachers
are actually paid.
When considering teacher pay, policymakers
should be aware that public school teachers,
on average, are paid 36% more per-hour than
the average white-collar worker and 11% more
than the average professional specialty and
technical worker. They should be aware that
the higher relative pay for public school teachers
exists in almost every metro area for which
data are available. Finally, they should be
aware that paying public school teachers more
does not appear to be associated with higher
student achievement.
Even given these facts, policymakers may well
decide that the pay of public school teachers,
relative to that of other workers, should be
higher than it is now. We may decide that we
are interested in increasing teacher pay regardless
of the effect or lack of effect on student achievement.
In the end, the pay of public employees is largely
shaped by political judgments that incorporate
subjective values and preferences. Because the
level of public school teacher pay is set by
governments with taxing power, the market has
only a limited influence. The level of public
school teacher pay is heavily shaped by whatever
the political process decides that it should
be. But those decisions are likely to be more
responsible and beneficial for students and
taxpayers if they are informed by the facts
contained in this report.
