June 6, 2006 4:11PM # “Underpaid Teachers” Richly Rewarded By [Neal McCluskey](https://www.cato.org/people/neal-mccluskey) --- SHARE Everybody knows that teachers are underpaid, right? Actually, we don’t know what teachers should be paid because individual teachers aren’t allowed to negotiate their pay with the people using their services–unions and politicians do the bargaining. Still, [a few stats in a *Washington Post* article](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/05/AR2006060501572.html) about a proposed contract for Washington D.C. public school teachers suggest that, if anything, many D.C. teachers are overpaid. Using salary information in the article, we see that under their current contract D.C. teachers must work 7 hours a day for 192 days, and their *starting* salary is $39,000. Per-hour, that comes to $29.01, [which beats the mean hourly pay for *all* D.C. residents](http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_dc.htm#b00-0000) by 59 cents. Under the proposed contract, the starting salary would become $42,500 to work 7 ½ hours for 196 days, actually dropping the hourly rate by 10 cents. Importantly, though, the four extra days would be dedicated to “training,” and the extra half-hour to “planning,” so there really wouldn’t be much work added to the teachers’ load. As impressive as these starting salary numbers are, though, the real eye-opener is at the *top* of the teachers’ salary ladder. Currently, the highest rung on the ladder is $75,000, or a hefty $55.80 an hour. Adjusting that to 40 hours per week for 50 weeks a year (roughly what most people work) the highest paid teacher would get an annual salary of $111,600 – not bad! Under the new contract that would become even more generous, with the unadjusted salary rising to $87,000, the new hourly rate hitting $59.18, and the “normal” annual salary reaching $118,360! And, of course, none of this includes teachers’ benefits, which are generally considered to be more generous than what’s available in the private sector. Now, before anyone starts calling for my head, as happened [the last time I wrote on this topic](http://www.susanohanian.org/outrage_fetch.php?id=336), let me say I don’t doubt that that many teachers work beyond their contracted hours. Of course, there’s also no question that *lots* of people work in excess of their time “on the clock.” With that in mind, the hours in the teachers’ contract are what teachers have agreed to, so it is the only fair basis on which to calculate their remuneration. So let’s put this in perspective. As mentioned, a *starting* D.C. teacher makes more per hour than the average wage for *all D.C. residents*. Even more surprising, under the proposed contract a teacher making the top wage would get $12.16 more per-hour than the average D.C. citizen in a *management position*, including sales managers, marketing managers, and IT managers. Indeed, the only managerial group that would make more than teachers on an hourly basis would be the absolute head honchos — chief executives. And here’s the kicker: What have D.C. teachers produced to deserve all this money? According to the *Post* article’s main point, a school system so decrepit that parents are leaving it in droves. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).