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I'll give up on the 3/4 of payroll issue. I've tried to find the source where I picked that up, and failed.

Without a verifiable source, I'll back away from the 3/4 figure. I still think my figure is close, but it is one I've put together from a variety of information and not a single study that includes the exact same conclusion.

California is spending $50B per year on public education out of a State budget of $84B. Of all educational spending in California, 65% is supposed to be spent directly in the classroom -- or $33B per year. Total non-education government payroll in California for 2002 was $18B, according to this

http://www.hjta.org/CGA.CA.County.Report.pdf#search='california%20government%20payroll'

If those numbers are roughly accurate, then in California teacher compensation is 65% ($33B of $51B) of all government employee compensation. California ranks 34th among the States in education spending, and spends only 91% as much as the national average.

http://www.ku.edu/~bdbaker/fipefsos/farwest05.pdf#search='california%20perpupil%20spending%20nevada'

So I bumped my figure from 65% to "3/4" as a ballpark for national averages. That still seems like a reasonable conclusion to me.

The study Nightmare pointed to says less than 1/3 of educational spending shows up in teachers paychecks. But 'paychecks' isn't defined very well. It doesn't appear to include benefits, which are very generous for school teachers. I still doubt it can account for such a difference. Most States have spending laws now for public education that requires more than 60% of all spending be "in the classroom", which implies teacher salaries, books, etc. as opposed to administrative overhead. I haven't found an explanation for the gap. 60% supposed to spent, but only 33% in this study ? Of course, the higher-education spending where salaries for teachers are higher can account for some of the gap, but it still seems too large.

I strongly suspect this "Research Department of the National Education Association (NEA)" has not counted all of the teacher compensation costs and they are pandering to their membership -- who, of course, want to believe they are underpaid. And only included K-12 and not compensation at college and university level. Remember that at the K-12 level, ALL of the money comes from the State budget. At public college and universities, there are student fees and tuition that are covering some of the costs. There are also donations covering some costs. That means the teacher compensation is a much higher percentage of the actual cost to the State than it is at the K-12 level.

Lewis, you don't like "inclusive" percentages but you might be interested to see that "FairTaxers" aren't the only ones that use them. In these figures from a Utah 1999 study on teachers' compensation compared to total eduction expenditure:

http://www.le.state.ut.us/lfa/reports/Data2001Book.pdf#search='teacher%20compensation%20as%20percentage%20of%20total%20spending'

where they show Salary $37K, Benefits $14K, and Benefits as Percentage of Total being only 27% -- they are showing the 'inclusive' percentage when it is really 38% as an 'exclusive' percentage of the Salary portion. And that doesn't include the employer FICA and FUTA tax payments as a "Benefit" so it is really $18K or roughly 50% on top of "Salary".

Later they show a "Total Teacher Salaries" of $113B on the same line as the Salary-without-benefits figure from earlier. They also show a "Total Education Spending" of $297B. So if we add the 50% Benefits figure, that is actually $169B in "Total Teacher Compensation", which is 57% of Total Education Spending. Much closer to the 60%-65% figure I recall. Which is what I assumed when comparing to total government employee compensation, and said "3/4".

Of course, this mixing of data from different sources and for different years can't provide more than a ballpark number. If 3/4 is wrong, then it isn't by much.