Come Sail Away

Gubernatorial wanna bes, the woman for all affiliations Comptroller Carole Keeton McClellan Rylander Strayhorn and currently (and to remain) politically unemployed Democrat Chris Bell, are braying in virtual Donkey unison about, again, teacher salaries.

Madame Comptroller is calling for a $4,000 raise per educator per annum, and the titular head of what stands for the state Other Party is calling for a $6,000 bump.

Their willful ignorance, or their finite selective choice of analytical shards of the salary situation is again on display, as we long ago exhibited in full(est) form.

In short, it is so much less expensive to reside in Texas than it is in the states at the top of the professorial muneration list, you are far better off with the lower salary ($41,743 aggregate) here than the higher one there or almost anywhere else. To self-excerpt (from 2004, with vintage appropriate numbers):

According to the National Association of Realtors Salary Calculator, the $58,287 paid to an educator in San Francisco (population 751,682) is equal via cost of living adjustment to a salary of $24,932 in Austin (population 672,011).

A Bigger, Better Lone Star Slice

Second in summative teacher pay is Connecticut, at $57,337 per year. But a teacher paid that in Stamford (population 120,107) would get COLA equivalent pay of only $26,759 in Waco (population 116,887).

And if you want to go with super huge cities, you can look at the New York borough of Manhattan (population 1,537,195) paying the averaged sixth highest salary at $54,054, which carries the economic weight of a $20,090 salary in Dallas (population 2,009,690).

Can one sense the trend here? The 32nd ranked teacher salary has twice the effective purchasing power here as do the salaries from those at the top of the NEA list there.

It also renders laughable the likes of these two for mindlessly parroting the alleged discrepancies.

According to Madame Comptroller, "More than 37,000 teachers leave the classroom each year, taking their skills to better-paying jobs or simply quitting. Turnover is highest where teacher pay is lowest."

Does she speak with all 37,000 on their way out the door each and every year to glean the reasons for their departures? And all of them, every year, all leave for exclusively compensatory reasons? That is an awful lot of heads-up coins in a row, to say the very least.

Bob Shrum's Favorite Film

Over here in Reality, of course, we realize that teachers leave behind the gig for myriad reasons, many of which do not fit into the over-arching Donkey theme of Elephantary penurity. But the approach of Democrats facing perpetual Lone Star minority-ness is the Never Ending Campaign, where they can make stump promises impossible to actually keep. The fact that there is some sort of ballotary action this November only worsens this situation.

Let us do the math, shall we? Should frogs invade, gnats and flies swarm, hail pelt the voting populace and Madame Comptroller become the next Governor, her teacher pay raise would cost the state of Texas $2,419,208,000 per biennium. Mister Excitement Chris Bell's bump would require an additional same time outlay of $3,628,812,000. That is without one thin dime being allotted anywhere else within the sprawling confines of the education Monolith.

From where, pray tell, does this mountain of additional coin come? Robin Hood, you had better grab your quiver, and ye olde property-rich tax districts better do the same with your wallets.

With all of the protestations of Governor Rick Perry's implementation of the 65% to the classroom rule, one should note that the two opponents he faces this fall not chewing a cheroot appear to agree in principle with the idea, albeit by their simply ratcheting up the dollar count on the backs of the rest of us.

The Governor merely wants to see to it that the already ridiculously copious dollars being spent on education are actually spent on, well, you know, education.

Which includes teacher salaries, as they are the ones who actually ply their wares in the classroom. Governor Perry wants to pay instructors more, but would like to do so without the economic ruination that would ensue should we continue to furiously and exclusively throw money at the Leviathan. He also realizes that we should pare back a great deal of the extraneous personnel that has grown kudzu-like on the Lone Star Government School System. Unlike those seeking his unseating, he is able to see the Texas education forest from the dead wood trees.

The Superintendent Is In Green

There are, in fact, many fabulously compensated positions to be found in the practice of public education. The problem is, none of them is "teacher". Every person in the many positions arrayed to ostensibly assist instructors, be they superintendents, counselors or union representatives, is paid far more than they are, and have in fact done them far more harm than good.

On Sunday we had in the Houston Chronicle a piece which reports that the ten highest paid superintendents in their area of the state make between $199,000 to $278,100, plus a whole host of opportunities to cull additional coin (see Moses, Mike).

Traveling around the state, we find:

Highland Park ISD has an enrollment of 6,276, which was the size of my collegiate Western American Geography class. I am quite sure, however, that my professor was not paid the $225,197 that Superintendent Cathy E. Brice is.

Beaumont ISD, with the miniscule enrollment of 19,570, pays Superintendent Carrol A. Thomas $299,273.

Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD's enrollment is 26,231, a populace that apparently requires they pay Superintendent Carol A. Griffin $275,000.

Again, the average teacher salary is $41,743.

Seven Times the Money?

These are things that make you go "Hmmm".

Let us now delve, briefly, into the unions assembled to "assist" these teachers. The salaries of the Texas Education Agency (TEA) senior staff are obnoxious when gazed upon standing alone, and are even more so when vertical beside those of the rank and file instructor.

Perhaps a reduction in the dues these teachers pay to fund these exorbitances would go far in alleviating any fiscal problems they may be facing. 

But beyond this, as we have previously written, many of the policy positions that the TEA and their brethren around the nation have taken are tremendously helpful to them, but egregiously damaging to the teachers they purport to represent.

Helping Ourselves

To cite but one, and to again self-excerpt:

Said solidarities have successfully created the false impression that less students per room means better results per student. What they have actually done is ensconced in law a mandate to allow for the increase of their union membership rolls by forcing schools to hire more under-qualified teachers to meet this artificial and artificially low standard.

The empirical and anecdotal evidence, of course, bears out no resemblance to the promises made when castigating for the new classroom criterion.

In 1969, the average Texas classroom contained twenty-four students. Today, it is down to fifteen. (It is interesting to note that if we were today at the 24:1 ratio, the average annual teacher imbursement would be $70,000. Once again we ask, these solidarities are in the business of helping whom?)

This sheer drop in per room presence has coincided directly with the fall in school performance, union assurances to the contrary notwithstanding.

The Teacher Union Boss Is In Purple

One notes that this reduced teacher compensation has not affected superintendent or union honcho salaries one whit.

And yet, with all of this, we have a Media insisting on foisting upon us the campaign educative inanities of Madame Comptroller and Mister Excitement, completely devoid of and free from Rational analysis.

As we wallow in its excruciating-ness, we also contemplate the additional anguish that is the fact that this is only March, and we have miles to go before they peep.