Posted on 02/12/2013 12:24:51 PM PST by MichCapCon
Michigan teachers rank second in the nation in terms of salary when the cost-of-living is factored in, according to an analysis done by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
Maryland ranked No. 1; Illinois was No. 3 followed by New York and California.
The analysis of salaries comes after Michigan Superintendent of Education Mike Flanagan said he would like to see all full-time public schools teachers make $100,000 a year in salary, which he said would attract higher quality teachers.
Michael Van Beek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center, estimated it would take $4.2 billion to increase all teachers to that six-figure salary level.
"When adjusting for context, Michigan's teachers have some of the highest average salaries in the entire country," Van Beek said. "Add to this the fact that Michigan districts spend more on benefits for teachers than most other states, and it becomes clear that Michigan's teachers are highly paid, on average, at least compared to their counterparts in other states."
Mackinac Center Education Policy Analyst Audrey Spalding said paying all teachers in Michigan $100,000 wasn't the best option to attract higher quality teachers.
"A better solution would be to pay teachers based on job performance and hiring difficulty," Spalding said. "Some high-performing Michigan teachers are surely paid too little, and their pay should be increased. But others are already earning more than they could elsewhere, and may in fact be overpaid."
Michigan ranked seventh nationally based solely on average teacher salary at $63,023, according to the National Education Association. New York led the county at $71,633.
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy used teacher salary averages reported by the NEA in 2009-10, the latest year data was available. The Center then factored in a state-by-state cost of living index available from political scientists William Berry, Richard Fording and Russell Hanson. Their index values adjust for cost-of-living in every state from 1960 to 2007.
Another education website had Michigan No. 2 in the country when factoring in cost of living with salaries.
TeacherPortal.com, an educational website owned by QuinStreet Inc. in California, used starting salaries and overall salaries from the NEA, job surveys and from private data sources and then factored in cost-of-living. It had Michigan as the second-most friendly in the country, behind Connecticut for teachers.
Detroit must be a Utopia!
We should all move to Dearborn for those traditional values.
There are a lot of Southern teachers who would love to make that kind of $$
However if Mich teachers make that much.....how much are the administrators are making?
One thing I have noticed is that these GOP governors and state houses are not cutting admin and their salaries and benefits.....because many of them end up in those cushy school admin jobs. I guess GOP cuts employees, while conservatives fire their bosses, too
High salaries won’t “attract high-quality teachers.” They’ll attract more greedy union pigs, reluctant to share the loot with anyone who might make them look bad by comparison.
I’d make them independent contractors.
Great teachers could write their own ticket. Good teachers could aspire to be great teachers. And bad teachers could work at McDonalds.
That’s nice. But how are the students doing?
as my Dad used to say
“nothing’s too good for our taxpayers!”
$100,000/9 months = $11,111.11 per month x 12 = $133,333.33 if they were to be working a 12 month year. The average annual income for a family of 4 is $51,000. So, these public servents think that they are entitled to earn 2.6 x the salary as those that are funding them?
Liberalism truly is a mental disorder.
Add to that the fact that they are constantly asking for more funding for x, y or z that is not salary related and after awhile us property tax payers feel abused.
We just had a 30% prop tax increase for the city and school portions of my prop tax and yet every day when I walk by the high school on my way to work, I get to see that they leave lites on, TV’s on, computers on, etc.
This is after I make sure and unplug everything in my house and walk 1.2 miles to work, regardless of weather, so that I can “live like no one else.” The public sector is really pushing for a major uprising.
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