You can visit the Document Feed at the Isthmus Web site to read the entire article by Bill Lueders.
From Education Week an article by Catherine Gewertz
New data from a survey of more than 500 school districts show the average salary of their superintendents has risen by more than 12 percent over the past decade in inflation-adjusted dollars, and that of their high school principals by more than 4 percent, while the average teacher salary declined by nearly 2 percent.
The salary survey of employees in precollegiate public schools also shows that the gap between teachers’ and superintendents’ salaries grew a bit wider in the same period. In 1993-94, the superintendents were paid on average 2.4 times as much as teachers. By 2003-04, the difference was 2.75 times.
The data come from the National Survey of Salaries and Wages in Public Schools and were released to Education Week this month by Educational Research Service as part of a research partnership.
ERS, a nonprofit organization based in Arlington, Va., has been conducting the salary survey for 31 years. The data cover the pay of public school employees in 23 professional and 10 support positions, including bus drivers, secretaries, librarians, teachers, principals, district business directors, and superintendents.
The survey data track those employees’ salaries annually from 1993-94 to this past fall. Education Week adjusted the pay in each of those years into 2003 dollars to assess how earnings fared relative to the cost of living over time.
The ERS survey shows relationships between salary and a district’s enrollment, per-pupil spending, and location.
Because the fall 2003 findings were obtained from the survey responses of 527 nationally representative districts, which together have about 1.4 million employees, they "could be considered a comprehensive picture of salaries" paid to public school employees for a given year, or over time, according to ERS researchers. They caution that the data are not weighted to estimate national statistics, but they reflect the salaries only in the districts that responded to the survey.
The 527 districts that responded to the survey make up 4.7 percent of the nation’s 11,206 public school systems enrolling 300 or more students. Districts smaller than that were not surveyed.
The data, which ERS will release in a full report this summer, are designed primarily to enable districts to put their employees’ salaries into a national or regional context, assess their competitiveness in hiring, and analyze salary trends over time, ERS researchers said in a preliminary draft of the report.
Losing Ground
In looking at teachers’ pay, the data show that the mean of classroom teachers’ average salaries in the districts surveyed was $36,531 in 1993-94, and $45,646 in 2003-04. Education Week’s cost-of-living adjustment changes the 1993-94 figure to $46,517.
In real dollars, then, the average teacher salary fell by $871, or 1.87 percent, during the period studied.
Some of the decline in teacher pay could be driven by the retirement of more experienced teachers at the upper end of the pay scale, and their replacement with younger, lower-paid teachers, ERS researchers said.
Tom Mooney, a vice president of the 1.3 million-member American Federation of Teachers and the president of its Ohio state affiliate, said he believes the decline was driven by insufficient resources and a lack of commitment in state and local governments to pay teachers more.
The AFT’s own research shows teachers are paid less than most white-collar private-sector employees.
The difference between teachers’ pay and superintendents’ pay could be even wider in urban areas, as big-city districts agree to higher salaries for talented superintendents to address chronically low student achievement, said Norm Fruchter, the director of the Institute for Education and Social Policy at New York University.
That willingness to seek cures for the ills of urban schools by compensating top officials has not been extended to teachers, Mr. Fruchter said, a situation he attributes to an underlying lack of respect for their profession.
While teachers’ actual salaries overall appear to have lost ground in the districts surveyed, the ERS data indicate that contract salaries for entry-level teachers have grown more than 14 percent in each of the five- year periods of the past decade, or by 30.6 percent overall, outpacing inflation by more than 3 percent. ERS researchers speculate that some states’ efforts to attract new teachers with higher pay might be fueling that trend.
Attracting good teachers is important, but retaining them is just as crucial, and too often overlooked in debates about teacher shortages, said Richard M. Ingersoll, an associate professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
The field has traditionally "front-loaded" its salary scales, meaning that it pays newcomers relatively well and veterans relatively poorly, said Mr. Ingersoll, who studies the teaching profession. That pay structure sends the message that experience isn’t valued, and exacerbates turnover, he said.
A Decade’s Trends
The consumer price index rose by 27.3 percent over the past decade. The ERS data show that the salaries of some groups of public education employees fared better than others relative to the cost of living.
The salaries for central-office administrators rose 36.5 percent on average, significantly outpacing the CPI. The salaries of school administrators such as principals and assistant principals increased by 31.3 percent.
Pay for support personnel such as teachers’ aides, custodians, and bus drivers rose by 32.2 percent. Auxiliary personnel such as counselors, librarians, and nurses gained 28.6 percent. Teachers’ pay rose by 25 percent, falling short of the rise in the CPI.
John M. Forsyth, ERS’ president and director of research, said the data suggest the need for better compensation in public education.
"Relative to other professions requiring similar training, public school salaries are too low and … should be raised to levels that are professionally competitive and market- sensitive," he said.
Bruce Hunter, the chief lobbyist for the Arlington, Va.- based American Association of School Administrators, which represents superintendents and is one of seven organizations that co-founded ERS, said he was gratified that administrators’ salaries have been rising. But he is pessimistic about the chances that their pay will ever rival that of private- sector jobs requiring similar skills.
"We never will pay our school leaders as much as the private sector," Mr. Hunter said. "[In the public’s view], schools are important, but not that important."
The data show a strong correlation between public school employees’ pay and the size of their school districts, as measured by student enrollment.
Superintendents’ average salaries, for instance, are $96,387 in districts enrolling 300 to 2,499 students; $117,839 in districts with 2,500 to 9,999 students; $140,435 in districts with 10,000 to 24,999 students; and $174,805 in those with 25,000 or more pupils.
Similar patterns emerge for some other public school employees, such as principals and subject-area supervisors, but don’t hold true for others. Bus drivers, custodians, and teachers, for instance, earn more in the middle-size districts surveyed than they do in the largest ones.
There were correlations between salaries, which make up the biggest part of school system budgets, and districts’ per-pupil spending.
Teachers in districts spending $9,000 or more per student earn $9,000 more annually than teachers who work in districts that spend less than $6,000 per pupil.
High school principals earn $16,200 more in the highest-spending districts than do their counterparts in the lowest-spending systems. Custodians earn $3 more per hour in the highest-spending districts than they do in the lowest- spending.
The pattern wasn’t as clear for superintendents, who earn more in the lowest-spending districts ($122,885) than they do in the second-highest- spending ($118,657).
Regional Differences
The data show some regional patterns in pay.
In general, public school employees are paid more in states in the Far West and Mideast regions. Central-office secretaries, for instance, earn $39,055 in the Far West, and $34,195 in the Mideast, compared with $27,104 in the Plains states and $26,844 in the Southwest.
Type of community also seems to influence pay, with large urban and suburban areas paying the most, and rural areas the least.
Superintendents in large urban districts, for instance, earned $175,344 in 2003-04, compared with $139,949 in medium urban districts, $148,201 in suburban, $108,542 in small-town districts, and $88,149 in rural ones. Teachers in the suburbs earned $50,844 on average—more than teachers made in any other type of community.
Superintendents’ salaries showed correlations with the district chiefs’ race and ethnicity. Hispanic superintendents in the districts surveyed averaged the highest salaries, followed by black superintendents, and then white superintendents.
ERS researchers said the gaps could be explained in part by the heavier distribution of minority superintendents in urban areas, where pay scales are higher. Mr. Hunter, of the AASA, said the pattern also could have emerged because many minority superintendents entered the field relatively recently, when contract salaries have been higher.
He also said the average pay of white superintendents could be lower because small, rural districts, where pay tends to be lower, are disproportionately run by white superintendents.
An Answer That May Surprise
Margaret DeLacy's recent article in Education Week
Since education is high on the national agenda, here’s a pop quiz that every American should take.
Question: What group of students makes the lowest achievement gains in school?
Answer: The brightest students.
In a pioneering study of the effects of teachers and schools on student learning, William Sanders and his staff at the Tennessee Value-Added Assessment System put in this way: "Student achievement level was the second most important predictor of student learning. The higher the achievement level, the less growth a student was likely to have."
Mr. Sanders found this problem in schools throughout the state, and with different levels of poverty and of minority enrollments. He speculated that the problem was due to a "lack of opportunity for highscoring students to proceed at their own pace, lack of challenging materials, lack of accelerated course
offerings, and concentration of instruction on the average or below-average student."
While less effective teachers produced gains for lower-achieving students, Mr. Sanders found, only the top one-fifth of teachers were effective with high-achieving students. These problems have been confirmed in other states. There is overwhelming evidence that gifted students simply do not succeed on their own.
Question: What group of students has been harmed most by the No Child Left Behind Act?
Answer: Our brightest students.
The federal law seeks to ensure that all students meet minimum standards. Most districts, in their desperate rush to improve the performance of struggling students, have forgotten or ignored their obligations to students who exceed standards. These students spend their days reviewing material for proficiency tests they mastered years before, instead of learning something new. This is a profoundly alienating experience.
Question: How well is the United States preparing able students to compete in the world economy?
Answer: Very poorly.
Of all students obtaining doctorates in engineering in American universities, just 39 percent are Americans. According to the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, "The performance of U.S. physics and advanced math students was among the lowest of the 16 countries that administered the ... assessments."
Question: What group of special-needs students receives the least funding?
Answer: Our brightest students.
And it’s getting worse. For example, Illinois, New York, and Oregon recently cut all state funding for gifted programs.
Given these facts, why has a board commissioned by the National Research Council proposed to make things much worse? The board’s report, ironically entitled "Engaging Schools: Fostering High School Students’ Motivation to Learn," contains recommendations that amount to a recipe for completely alienating our most capable children. Based on old, discredited, and sloppy research, the committee, which did not include any experts on gifted education, recommended the elimination of all "formal or informal" tracking—even if participation was voluntary—in favor of mixed-ability classrooms.
Does tracking really harm students? Jeannie Oakes claimed that it did in a popular but, to my mind, poorly researched book called Keeping Track published nearly 20 years ago. However, a 1998 review of the evidence on tracking over the past two decades, done by Tom Loveless, the director of the Brookings Institution’s Brown Center on Education Policy, found no consensus that tracking is harmful or creates unequal opportunities for academic achievement. This review was ignored in the NRC panel’s 40 pages of research citations.
Also missing was any reference to a 1993 report from the U.S. Department of Education, "National Excellence," in which then-Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley noted a "quiet crisis" in the education of top students, pointing out that "these students have special needs that are seldom met," and warning that "our neglect of these students makes it impossible for Americans to compete in a global economy demanding their skills."
Although research on schoolwide tracking cuts both ways, research pointing to the importance of advanced classes and grouping for gifted students is overwhelming.
A research review by Karen B. Rogers found that grouping gifted students produces big gains—sometimes exceeding half a year’s additional achievement per year in school when curriculum is modified appropriately. On the other hand, she found that cooperative learning within mixed-ability groups produces no gains.
In her 2002 book Re-Forming Gifted Education (also ignored by the NRC panel), Ms. Rogers noted that under the mixed-ability-group instruction recommended by the NRC, "few students, except those with exceptionally low ability, will benefit."(emphasis added)
A statistical analysis published in 1992 by James A. Kulik demonstrated that the benefits from advanced classes for talented students were "positive, large, and important" and said that [de-tracking] could greatly damage American education." Student achievement would suffer, Mr. Kulik maintained, and the damage would be greatest if schools "eliminated enriched and accelerated classes for their brightest learners. The achievement level of such students falls dramatically." He also found that students of all ability levels benefit from grouping that adjusts the curriculum to their aptitude levels.
A study of intermediate students’ math achievement published in 2002 by Carol Tieso also found that differentiated instruction combined with flexible grouping improved academic achievement. Ms. Tieso concluded that students from all socioeconomic backgrounds made gains, and that students enjoyed working in differentiated groups and were more motivated than peers in a comparison group.
Even the National Research Council board acknowledged that teachers would require a lot of specialized training to carry out its recommendations in "Engaging Minds." Differentiation is hard to do well. Teachers must know how to assess students who are years above grade level and then be able to rewrite the whole curriculum to address their assessed learning needs. Although the board members must know that this training has not been provided and is not going to happen, they went ahead and recklessly recommended a policy that will harm many capable, hard-working students in the hope that it might help some struggling students.
They seem to be unaware of the daily realities affecting American schools. Studies by the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented have repeatedly found that teachers do not make significant modifications to their instruction to accommodate gifted students.
This past November, Seattle teachers issued a resolution protesting a directive requiring advanced instruction for highly capable students in their classrooms because they had neither the time, training, and class size, nor the resources necessary to carry it out. Ability grouping is significantly more cost-effective, requires less training, and is more effective in this regard than heterogeneous classes. Do we have education dollars to waste?
Gifted students are truly our forgotten children. Neglected in our schools and ignored by our policymakers, they spend their days dozing through classes in which they aren’t learning. Many suffer from depression. It is time to take them out of their holding pens and give them a chance to stretch and to grow.