In Teacher Pay, Rewards and Tenure, we tackle the thorny issue of paying teachers what they deserve. Public school teachers already tend to make more money than the average private sector worker. Jay Greene and Marcus Winters note: “According to the BLS, the average public school teacher in the United States earned $34.06 per hour in 2005…. 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.”

Still, teachers unions like the NEA work hard to increase the salaries of teachers even more, while opposing pay-for-performance. They want higher pay because, as they argue, by educating the next generation teachers fundamentally affect our nation's economic and political success. They oppose performance-based pay because, so they declare, it would unfairly penalize teachers for factors affecting children's academic performance that they cannot influence. Well, you can't have your cake and eat it, too! If you claim to deserve more money because your work is so essential and important, then you should be willing to subject yourself to objective measures evaluating how well you do that work.

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