Report: No relationship between teacher pay, student results
A new report looking at the salaries of the 75 largest school districts in California alleges there is no correlation between teacher compensation and higher student test scores.
Transparent California posted the report on their website’s blog on Wednesday morning. The report looks at teacher salaries in the state’s 75 largest school districts and compares them to the district’s 2013 Academic Performance Index scores, which are based on a combination of scores on various standardized tests. (That’s the last year that API scores are available, as the state has overhauled its standardized testing system to match up with the new Common Core State Standards.) API scores range from 200 to 100, with a target of 800 for all schools.
“The average full-time teacher compensation was $94,796 and the average API score was 795,” the report reads in part. “Compensation is defined as wages plus the employer-cost of health and retirement benefits. The average total employee cost per enrolled student was $6,946 and was negatively correlated against the district’s API scores.”
Transparent California is a website operated by the Tustin-based California Policy Center, a conservative think tank affiliated with the State Policy Network, which works to “limit government and advance market-friendly public policy at the state and local levels,” according to the SPN website.
“I guess you could say we’re a center-right organization,” said Ed Ring, executive director of the California Policy Center. “Those terms are becoming very muddled and we, frankly, try to stay as non-partisan as we can, because the issues we care about, we since believe should concern left-wing citizens as much as right-wing citizens.”
He’d rather look at the report’s conclusion: “There’s zero correlation between how much teachers make and how the students are doing,” he said. “How long a teacher works and how many credentials a teacher acquires has no relationship to how students do.”
Transparent California looked at the employee compensation records of more than 740,00 K-12 employees, who account for nearly 80 percent of educators statewide.
The Ontario-based Chaffey Joint Union High School District is called out in the report for having the highest average compensation package for teachers in the districts examined — $119,942 — but having a sub-800 API score of 777. In contrast, San Ramon Valley Unified in northern California had a 923 API score in 2013, with an average teacher compensation of $88,638.
“Something’s really wrong when schools are delivering API scores that low,” Ring said. “Why are we still paying teachers based on how long they show up, or on how many credentials they get that they can turn around and take back to the payroll department?”
Mat Holton, Superintendent of the Chaffey Unified High School District, is not a fan of the Transparent California report.
“This is a flawed comparison on many levels,” a written response from Holton begins. “API is an obsolete metric that was suspended unanimously by the California Board of Education earlier this Report: No relationship between teacher pay, student results:
