Union: California Teachers Highest Paid in Nation

Written by CA Political News on March 08, 2009, 07:04 PM

Editorial: Golden state for teachers
California teachers the highest-paid in U.S.

Orange County Register editorial, 3/8/09


California's largest public school teachers' union is trying to panic voters by claiming this state's government schools are pitifully underfunded. Baloney.

The California Teachers' Association wants voters to approve ballot measure 1B on the May 19 ballot, to drain $9.3 billion more out of taxpayers' pockets to pour into teachers' wallets. Beware.

The CTA claims California ranked 47th in the nation in per-pupil spending in 2006, but only after applying an arcane formula that "adjusted for regional differences."

California public school teachers must be woefully underpaid, right? Not exactly. But let's not quibble. Let's use teacher union statistics.

According to the CTA's parent union, the National Education Association, California teachers were the nation's top-paid, with $64,424 average annual salary in 2007-08.

Don't take just the NEA's word for it. The other mammoth national public school teacher union, the American Federation of Teachers AFL-CIO, said the year before the CTA study that "for the second consecutive year, California had the highest average teacher salary in 2006-07 at $63,640, or about 25 percent above the national average."

If California teachers are so highly paid, and the CTA is telling the truth about California's low per-pupil spending, what drags down the average? Are schools drastically underfunding janitorial services or paying their administrators way too little? We don't know.

One thing is clear, however. By the way the nation's largest teachers' unions measure, California teachers do pretty well compared with their counterparts in 49 other states.

Because of its huge student population and its high-priced teachers, California spends 44 percent more on K-12 public education than does Texas, the next highest-spending state, $59 billion versus $41 billion. What do Californians get for this huge public school price tag?

Education Week magazine reports that a mere 22 percent of California fourth-graders are proficient in reading, and 23 percent of eighth-graders are proficient in math. Those marks are substantially lower than the 31 percent national average in both categories.

That raises a reasonable question. If California taxpayers pay public school teachers so much more, why do California students perform so much worse?

The teachers' union apparently wants California voters to believe the answer is: "Because taxpayers don't pay us enough." Excuse us for saying so, but that doesn't seem to add up.