This morning, about 350,000 students in Chicago Public Schools will be without teachers. While the 25,000-plus unionized teachers take to the picket lines in a strike over benefits and teacher evaluations, working parents are scrambling to figure out what to do. “We know a strike is really going to be …
This week, President Obama proposed a new $1 billion federal program that would establish a “Master Teacher Corps” in 100 locations across the country. This is not the first time the Administration has proposed subsidizing teacher salaries, but it is the first proposal that would give federal-issued paychecks directly to …
Last year, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated that America’s public school teachers are “desperately underpaid” and called for a doubling of teachers’ wages. A similar theme is touted frequently by politicians, media, and education unions. But teacher compensation is much more than salary. The plush benefits given to …
Education Secretary Arne Duncan called for dramatically raising teacher pay last Friday on MSNBC, declaring that the current average salary (about $55,000) should be doubled to improve teacher quality. It’s a familiar refrain for Duncan, who in the same interview declared himself a “radical” when it comes to paying teachers …
In yesterday’s “Room for Debate” feature, The New York Times asks whether public-school teacher compensation should be increased. The answer we give, based on our recent report, is that teachers already receive more compensation than comparably skilled private-sector workers. If the current compensation bonus has yet to increase the quality …
Last winter, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) traveled his state, holding a series of townhalls in which he touted a significant but politically unpopular plan: asking public school teachers to accept a pay freeze and begin contributing 1.5 percent of their salaries toward their health care plans, whereas before …
