AP Poll: 78 Percent Say Public School Teachers Aren’t Paid Enough

[bcking 3,157]

From the Brookings Article:

 

"Most of the developed countries with which we compete pay much better. Here’s the relevant picture taken directly from the OECD’s Education at a Glance 2015."

 

I don't think that is the relevant chart from the OECD article for that statement.  The relevant chart is D3.2 for that statement.

 

"Relative teacher pay" (relative to other jobs in the same country) is also important, but it's a different issue. Salaries in many industries in the USA are high compared to other countries. That isn't a reflection on how we pay our teachers, it is a reflection on how other industries pay their employees. That artificially makes us look worse in a chart like the one above.

 

For example my wife's industry of Oil and Gas. Salary for a similar position in the UK is about 70% (sometimes less) than what it is in the USA, after converting into USD's. So a position that would pay maybe 70,000 USD equivalent in the UK would pay around 110-140 (or more) in the USA. Her friends who accepted jobs in the USA immediately after school were on six figures as their first salary. The starting salaries in the UK were below 50,000 GBP. 

 

So if you were to compare a teacher with a master's degree to a petroleum geologist with a master's degree in the two countries, we would look much worse. Even if the teacher's salary was equivalent in both countries, the ratio would be worse here because the PG salary is so much higher. 

 

Their follow-up graph (the percentage increase required to reach each country) is essentially them taking the data from the D3.1 chart and converting it into that format. So it's still just salaries relative to other fields in each country, which still has the same issue depending on the salaries of other fields.

Edited April 25, 2018 by bcking

[bcking 3,157]

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/eag-2015-32-en.pdf?expires=1524670193&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=AFED764720D2273A79430D54D969ABCB

 

I found a PDF of just the salary chapter, which also includes all of the raw data tables.

 

I used table D3.4 (Average Teacher Salaries by Country) and just put that into a graph format. Here are two of the 4 categories (I can do the other two if you would like, it takes about 60 seconds for each one).

 

They are both PPP (USD Purchasing Power Parity)