The high cost of substitute teachers

"U.S. teachers take off an average of 9.4 days (roughly 1 day per month) each during a typical 180-day school year," June Kronholz writes in Education Next. "By that estimate, the average child has substitute teachers for more than six months of his school career."

Duke University researchers Charles Clotfelter, Helen Ladd, and Jacob Vigdor "found that being taught by a sub for 10 days a year has a larger effect on a child’s math score than if he’d changed schools, and about half the size of the effect of poverty," Kronholz adds. "Columbia researchers Mariesa Herrmann and Jonah Rockoff concluded that the effect on learning of using a substitute for even a day is greater than the effect of replacing an average teacher with a terrible one, that is, a teacher in the 10th percentile for math instruction and the 20th percentile in English instruction."

Employment of grown-ups outpaces enrollment of children

A new Friedman Foundation report has the details.

If teachers are underpaid ...

... why don't they earn more when they move to other occupations?

School choice will empower ...

... teachers.

Are public school teachers underpaid?

Education Next has a debate.

Is the 'master's bump' a waste?

A new report from a liberal think tank suggests Oklahoma could be putting that $38 million a year to better use.

'America has too many teachers'

"Public-school employees have doubled in 40 years while student enrollment has increased by only 8.5 percent -- and academic results have stagnated," Andrew Coulson writes in The Wall Street Journal. "While America may have too many teachers, the greater problem is that our state schools have squandered their talents on a mass scale."

Nor is tenure prevalent in the oil patch

An Associated Press story in today's Oklahoman informs us that one North Dakota oil town's prosperity isn't reaching public-school teachers.

That's because public-school teachers aren't part of the free-enterprise system.

School system fails to harness skills of education workforce

"The public school monopoly is warehousing 3 million people in jobs that appear to have done nothing to improve student learning," Andrew J. Coulson writes. "Our K-12 government school system simply does not know how to harness the skills of our education workforce, and so is preventing these people from contributing to our economy while consuming massive quantities of tax dollars."

A better way to pay

Jason Richwine of The Heritage Foundation offers five rules for reforming teacher compensation.

Hispanic teacher

... supports school choice.

Educators now make up 12% of U.S. millionaires

Wall Street Journal blogger Robert Frank has the story.

'A less perfect union'

Andrew J. Coulson on how the NEA and AFT play Monopoly with your kids.

'More pay for public-school teachers won’t increase quality'

Says Jason Richwine of The Heritage Foundation. One of the reasons: "Many of the best teaching applicants—those who graduate from more competitive colleges, earn higher GPAs, or hold degrees in specialized areas such as math or science—are turned down in favor of less qualified candidates who took the traditional route of majoring in education."

Special-needs student bullied -- by teachers

Teachers favor Oklahoma's school-choice law

The Association of American Educators -- "the largest national, non-union, professional educators’ association, offering an alternative to the partisan politics and non-educational agendas of the teacher labor unions" -- recently released its 2011 membership survey.

A full 78 percent of survey respondents nationwide approve of Oklahoma's new law providing a tax credit to individuals and corporations that donate to organizations providing Opportunity Scholarships for children to attend private schools.

Legislators looking out for taxpayer interests

"Here’s an eye-opening school statistic for you," Greg Forster wrote in an OCPA article this year. "Only half of Oklahoma’s public education employees are teachers. The bureaucracy is now so big, it takes up half the system. It’s the blob that ate the schools."

To his great credit, state Rep. David Brumbaugh (R-Broken Arrow) is trying to do something about it. The Oklahoman reports today that "Brumbaugh told members of a budget subcommittee on education that legislators should encourage public school districts to privatize food services as well as medical services and janitorial services. Contracting out transportation services also could be considered." After all, as Dr. Forster pointed out, 

There's absolutely no reason for any sector of government to directly employ bus drivers, cafeteria workers, janitors, or any of the rest of this category. The whole enchilada needs to be privatized posthaste. You wouldn't just eliminate unnecessary positions that are there due to featherbedding, although that's considerable. More important, though, you’d be able to pay the market rate for the positions you kept, instead of hyperinflated civil-service salaries and benefits (think pensions). And you’d be able to fire people if they didn’t deliver good services.

Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with this assessment. State Rep. Ann Coody (R-Lawton) said a school district in her area tried to privatize janitorial services. "It was a disaster," she said. "It was not effective at all. Our school custodians take great pride in their work."

That's disappointing enough coming from a Republican, but coming from a member of ALEC ("limited government, free markets, federalism") it is extremely disappointing. (Though, to be honest, not as disappointing as arguing against school choice for special-needs children.)

Just a guess here, but if Republicans can't even pluck this low-hanging fruit, my guess is they won't be showing a lot of interest in the new Heritage/AEI study which concludes that American public-school teacher salaries are $120 billion over market value.

Even so, Rep. Brumbaugh and other conservatives in the legislature deserve credit for their continued attempts to protect taxpayers.

Raises all around!

The state's most powerful labor union wants to increase teacher salaries $2,000 across the board in 2012. Even if a teacher is mediocre, or poor, or downright incompetent, the OEA believes a $2,000 raise is in order.

In addition, OEA wants to give more money to teachers with master's degrees and seniority, "even though there is no evidence that these things help students learn," as Bill and Melinda Gates point out today in The Wall Street Journal.

Are public school teachers overpaid?

That's the question to be addressed at an American Enterprise Institute event November 1.

The public commonly accepts that public school teachers are "desperately underpaid," in the words of Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and that raising teacher pay should be a priority of education reform. But is this true? AEI Resident Scholar Andrew Biggs and Heritage Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Jason Richwine will provide new data on teacher salaries, fringe benefits, and job security that point to significantly more value in teachers' total compensation packages than was previously evident. Although some teachers may be underpaid, the data suggest the majority are receiving higher pay than they would be likely to receive in private-sector employment.

'A half-century of tolerating mediocrity'

Over at Education Next ('Want a 3.8 GPA? Major in Education'), Frederick Hess points us to a new study by University of Missouri economist Cory Koedel, who writes:

Undergraduate education majors become teachers, teachers become principals, and principals become district-level administrators. Ultimately, a sizable fraction of the workforce in the education sector is trained in education departments where evaluation standards are astonishingly low. Should we be surprised that low standards persist in K-12 schools?