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Jens 'n' Frens |
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CNN/Money ran a piece on the web comparing teachers' hourly wages to those of other professionals; today there's a piece relating and (to some extent) responding to letters written in response. There's a bit of the typical "shut up and agree with me""Shame on you for even running this story," added another reader, taking issue with the very question.and some claims that, if meant to be typical, are far-fetchedFrank claims to work "3,000-plus hours a year." Spread out over a 40-week school year, that would mean 12 hour days, six days a week, resting only on Sundays.But what I find most interesting is an argument that seems quite selectively applied:Joel, for example, estimated that babysitters are paid $5 an hour or so per child. Multiplying that by the 30 students in his class, Joel figures he would make $162,000 a year as a baby-sitter.Now, this is the kind of thing we see once in a while about how much it would cost to hire fifteen specialists to do "the same things" a stay-at-home Mom does, but I don't often seen it given as a response to the other popular comparison point to teachers' pay: that of professional athletes. Why do we pay professional basketball players so much more than we do teachers?, goes the question, to which the answer is, We don't; "we" pay teachers $100B a year, and basketball players less than $2B. Each basketball player makes more than each teacher, of course, because not only are economies of scale more difficult in education, but the teachers' unions tend to resist what efforts could be made. (The minimal value of small class size has been mentioned here recently.) Ultimately, the answer to the question as to whether teachers are underpaid is best addressed by a comment that doesn't mean to address it: |
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