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Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2006 > December > 17 > Entry
Would teachers trade pensions for big pay?
A group called the Commission on Skills in the Workplace wants to cut a deal with teachers — and the promise is salaries around $100,000 a year for experienced teachers.
The catch? To get the money teachers would have to give up their pensions and go with a traditional 401-K retirement plan.
The group has put forward a lot of interesting ideas in a report that warns of dire consequences without drastic change in the way we educate kids. More comment on the report can be found at Joanne Jacobs’ blog and at The Education Wonks.
The commission includes New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York school chief Joel Klein, former education secretary Rod Paige and former Michigan Gov. John Engler. It was funded in part by the Annie Casey and Gates foundations.
Some of the other ideas the report argues for are charter-like schools given autonomy with the hope they will innovate and allowing some kids to move on from school after 10th grade. One immediate criticism is that many of these ideas are not new and to some extent the recommendations are a hodge-podge or recent reform ideas.
But the teacher pay proposal intrigued me. In theory, the system would work like this. Teachers would start at much higher pay — at least $45,000 — and could earn over $100,000. But instead of a system that rewards longevity with comfortable retirement, teachers would be on their own to finance retirement through a 401-K. And, at least in theory, the innovative, charter like schools would weed out low performers more effectively, rewarding the best teachers with the highest pay. The report argues this system would attract more talent to the teaching profession.
So tell us, teachers, would you opt for this type of system and trade the retirement security for better financial rewards in your work years? Do you believe much more pay would attract better talent?
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Comments
By lou
December 19, 2006 4:17 PM | Link to this
Mary, it would be nice to be healthy. My father was never ill, I cannot remember him ever missing a day of work because he was ill. In the last 3 yrs. he has had an anyorism and has beaten cancer. He has to pay for is insurance, it is not an option.By Mary
December 19, 2006 1:34 PM | Link to this
Keith, it is not in my nature to wait for an invitation to speak up. People like me come in handy when there is a fire or another impending disaster. I do not wait for others to notice, and simply speak up whether I am a teacher or not. Lou, like your father, I am a retired Air Force engineer (military, not civilian). My approach to my health care coverage is to work like heck to stay healthy and seek medical attention sparingly. I pay small premiums on a system that was “promised” for free. However, it is nice to know I might have something to fall back on for catastrophic coverage. I am concerned about the lack of general medical knowledge everywhere and violation of “first do no harm” or Hippocratic Oath. The lack of understanding of human body ailments, causes and effects, and heavy reliance on expensive drugs and risky, invasive procedures does not appeal to me at all. Our health care system, nationwide, seems to be broken. Even health care leaders point this out.By gth7
December 19, 2006 11:54 AM | Link to this
Why is it that whenever we talk about paying teachers better, we have to counter it with what they have to give up to get more? If we value education, we should put a valuation on it that makes sense. Maybe you think teachers shouldn’t make much because of bad experiences you had as a kid or as a parent, but if we want better, we’re giong to have to pay for it!By Expat Teacher
December 18, 2006 10:46 PM | Link to this
I’ve been teaching in the international/independent sector for 5 years. I’d absolutely work for more and take a 401-k. Right now I work for 1/2 that amount AND have a 401-k (403-b, actually). It seems like a decent proposal. Undergrads don’t have to choose service or salary. Now they can do both. http://expatteacher.blogspot.comBy Oldprof
December 18, 2006 8:34 PM | Link to this
Ben, I live in the reality where Charters, presented as an innovation that would out-perform publics, have not done so—a few of them perform like suburban schools b/c they’re drawing suburban students; the rest perform a little worse than urban schools. At the same time, they’ve destabilized education (just ask any parent who had to find a new school when the charter suddenly closed, mid-year). They’ve been instruments of fraud by a few unscrupulous types who’ve taken advantage of the non-existent oversight (in your own alternate reality, are you aware that the state board isn’t even certain which students are enrolled in charters? Not the charters’ fault, that bit). I guess my reality is alternate, in that it’s based on careful consideration of actual evidence rather than Terry Ryan’s Fordham Foundation misrepresentations.By Keith
December 18, 2006 5:09 PM | Link to this
I thought this question was posed for teachers to answer on the discussion. Some posting aren’t teachers. OldProf hit it on the head. Promises, promises, promises, from boards, from state, from feds. So we get social security trying to suck in the money in the State Teachers Retirement of Ohio to help bolster social insecurity for a couple extra years. So we get charter schools. Many people working in charter schools were weeded out of public schools; they used to end up in parochial schools (names on request). And if anyone thinks most teachers in charters are certified in their teaching area, I’ve got a bridge for you. I even heard a principal had been quietly moved from public and went into charter the next year—moving the trash. The reality is more pay would have been fine for me. I would have saved even more and the pay I gave up for the part the board paid into retirement on my behalf would have been nice to have also. The problem is most people won’t save on their own and that applies to some teachers also. Ohio is blessed to have a fairly safe secure retirement system other than administrators often retire one day and are reemployed by schools at the same pay more than teachers are reemployed at the same pay!!! But I recall in Nashville hearing of a teacher who would be getting social security who was still teaching at 65 because he couldn’t afford to retire. He couldn’t even live on what he would get and the low pay in the area meant he couldn’t save for retirement. So bring on the $45 - $100K salary range like Japan. I’ll encourage the quality teachers to stay instead of becoming engineers.By lou
December 18, 2006 3:57 PM | Link to this
I’m not sure how this would weed out bad teachers. Would this mean more tax dollars for schools that have no accountability and less for public education? I think I would still be a teacher, I love to teach. I have a 403b, and worked in the private sector long enough to get social security. Mary, I don’t know where you get your info, but my mom is a retired teacher and my dad is a retired engineer for the Air Force and my mom has to work to pay for their health insurance. Their retiremnet is not enough. If my dad had worked in the private sector he would have made 10x’s what he made working for the government. That pays a lot of insurance and 401 payments.By Ben
December 18, 2006 1:51 PM | Link to this
Oldprof writes: “Charter schools are a dismal failure. Why breed new ones?” Do you only read hardcore NEA propaganda? What alternate reality are you living in?By Mary
December 18, 2006 1:46 PM | Link to this
Old prof, the issue is few in charge seem to have a command or understanding of the details of what is already promised at all levels of government including unions, boards, etc. Pension systems in private industry are also being bailed out at record levels through the Pension Benefit Guarranty Corporation, or whatever it is called. We taxpayers help fund that too. When do we grow up, get real, and do the math? At least some people have been lecturing about social security shortfalls for some time.By Oldprof
December 18, 2006 12:14 PM | Link to this
Let’s go past the pay proposals, which probably wouldn’t develop as promised anyway, and look at a couple of other assumptions. (1) We’ve been “innovating” in education for decades, and it keeps getting worse. As Miles Brand noted, “innovation means throwing away what works.” (2) Charter schools are a dismal failure. Why breed new ones? (3) Weeding out bad teachers sounds good, but in many cases administrators have no clue about which are the good and which are the bad teachers. But I note that the Commission thinks that eliminating state retirement systems would reduce costs: those contributions currently happen instead of social security, so if you eliminate them then the savings will go to the feds (who have been toying with the idea of sucking teachers into social security on and off for years now). Do we want to trust recommendations from people who couldn’t think of that detail?By Wayne
December 18, 2006 9:08 AM | Link to this
They certainly would. Then we’d hear how they can’t afford to retire after they spend it all and we owe them for that also!By Mary
December 18, 2006 8:24 AM | Link to this
Related to this discussion is an article on the front of today’s USA Today. It discusses the pension and health care packages promised to government workers, including teachers. To provide everything currently promised, including health care for retirees, would cost something like half a million dollars per household. Some states have already started to take steps to reel in the fiscal madness.