The setting of government school
administrator and teacher pay in New York is now a
purely political exercise. Salaries are no longer
strictly a
product of skills and job difficulty, nor regulated by free
market forces. Private sector New York teachers earn far
less than public sector teachers. Based on
the Bureau
of Labor Statistics Occupational Classification System, New
York teachers earn far more per hour than those with similar
jobs and even more
per hour than math & computer scientists, economists and
physicians! (For up to date statistics, see the BLS
National Compensation Survey).
The political nature of educator pay plus New York bargaining
rules that favor educators means voters have an obligation to
become informed about the salaries and benefits paid to
educators. Until now, it has been impossible to accurately
and easily know how much educators earn, especially in relation
to others. With the Lifetime Earnings Calculator you can
quickly know the truth about administrator and teacher pay.
The model also estimates personal retirement savings and state and federal income taxes.
Total Compensation = salary +
"add-ons" + benefits + pension
The calculator provides access to scores of graphs detailing
salaries, add-ons,
health insurance and pensions. For example, here is a
graph of the lifetime total compensation of a Scotia-Glenville
teacher, based on the
current salary schedule, a 30-year career and an 85-year
lifespan.
A Scotia-Glenville teacher can expect to earn total
lifetime compensation of $3.29 million from a 30-year career (in 2003
dollars). That's an average of $109,800 per year worked,
or $67.44 an hour.
Let's compare that to a private sector worker
with the same salary who pays the average 28% of health
insurance costs (compared to S-G's 13%), has no pension plan (as
many don't) and works the same 30 years.
The private sector worker has total
lifetime compensation of $2.33 million, or 29% less than the
teacher. The annual average is $77,700 per year.
Considering that teachers
work an average of 44 hours a week for 37 weeks while
workers in the private sector work 40 hours a week for 48 weeks
(excluding vacations and holidays), the private sector worker
earns $40.47 an hour, or 40% less per hour than a teacher.
How
can that be with equivalent salaries? The lack of a
pension and lower health insurance contributions by
employers. What teachers earn in pensions for
contributions of about $12,000, many private sector workers have
to save for from their own earnings, often with little or no
contributions from employers. Letter D in the graph
shows the teacher's pension income during the period when the
private sector worker remains ineligible for full Social
Security benefits.
Letter A shows
that even with equivalent salaries, teacher compensation is
higher in the early years due to higher health insurance
benefits and faster than average growth in
"add-ons." Letter B shows private sector
compensation overtaking the teacher's as teachers slow the rate
of salary growth in the middle to balloon up to higher final
salaries for larger pensions. Letter C, when both
are at the top salary, shows teacher compensation above the
other's due to larger health insurance contributions from
schools than given on average to workers in the private
sector. Letter E shows the earnings of both after
becoming eligible for Social Security. Note that while
Social Security recipients receive annual cost of living
increases, NY teachers receive them on only the first $18,000 of
their pensions. Consequently, inflation eats away at the
value of a teacher's pension more quickly than for Social
Security. Even so, the teacher has retirement income worth
more than twice that of the private sector worker in the last
year of life.
You can learn all this and
much more by using the Lifetime Earnings Calculator and applying
it to your own situation. Then make your own judgments
about the appropriateness of educator compensation and let your
school board know what you think. Even more importantly,
vote your informed judgment in school elections because every
election is as much about educator pay as it is programs
for students.
