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Corona Could Lead to Contraction Acceleration


Guest DT

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3 minutes ago, Gipper said:

Talk about missing the point...

Not at all.   You are the individual who seems to believe that all jobs must pay a "living wage".

 

Just now, Gipper said:

Most government jobs pay well, education should be included. 

Why?

 

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https://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-truth-about-teacher-pay

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One of the most common beliefs about American education is that teaching is an "underpaid" profession. Think tanks purport to calculate the "teacher pay gap." The media run stories about teachers taking second and third jobs to pay the bills. Politicians call for across-the-board raises. They all see raising teacher pay as a matter of simple fairness, as well as a way to attract better teachers and improve educational outcomes.  

They are all misguided. The highly publicized "pay gap" that dominates news headlines is the product of a simplistic methodology that, when universally applied, suggests that nurses, firefighters, and other professionals are dramatically overpaid. Furthermore, predictions generated by the underpaid-teacher hypothesis — such as that teachers must have high quit rates, or that a large percentage of their income flows from second jobs — are not supported by the data. Teachers as a group are generally well compensated, and teacher pay and benefits have risen faster over time than compensation in private-sector jobs. Failure to recognize these facts can lead education reform down a blind alley.

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THE MYTH OF THE TEACHER PAY GAP

The union-affiliated Economic Policy Institute (EPI) issues an annual report on the "teacher pay gap" — the difference in salaries between teachers and similar private-sector workers. This year, EPI finds that the gap is 21% nationwide. At the state level, the gaps vary widely, from a salary penalty of just 0.2% in Wyoming to a high of 32.6% in Arizona. Whenever pay disputes arise in a state, the media treat EPI's findings as authoritative, rarely bothering to include a contrary view. After all, everyone knows that teachers are underpaid.

Reporters might be more skeptical if they realized that EPI's own pay-gap methodology leads to some other conclusions that are, to put it delicately, less intuitive. Using the same Census data and the same basic techniques that EPI applies to teachers, we find that registered nurses are "overpaid" by 29%. Meanwhile, telemarketers deserve a big raise, as they currently suffer a 26% salary penalty. Aerospace engineers are apparently overpaid by 38%, but "athletes, coaches, and umpires" are paid 21% less than their skills are worth. Photographers should consider going on strike, as they make 16% less than comparable workers. Firefighters are moochers by contrast, taking in 25% above their rightful salaries.

If all this sounds ridiculous, it's because EPI's method is so simplistic. To arrive at its 21% pay gap, EPI merely compares teacher salaries with the salaries of people who have roughly the same number of years of education and the same demographic characteristics. More specifically, EPI performs a regression analysis using Census Bureau survey data, in which respondents provide information on their salaries along with their age, education, region of residence, marital status, and other factors that are predictive of earnings. Included in this analysis is a "dummy variable" indicating whether the individual is a public-school teacher. The coefficient on the dummy variable represents the effect on salary of being a teacher after controlling for all of the other factors listed above.

While controlling for worker characteristics is the right idea, this model clearly cannot measure important differences among workers in different occupations. The argument breaks down when we drop the teacher dummy variable from EPI's regression and replace it with any other occupation, then observe the often-large salary premium or penalty associated with it. In fact, about four in every 10 occupations we analyzed show an alleged wage premium or penalty greater than the one EPI claims for teachers. We could write dozens of reports with titles such as "The Electrician Pay Premium" or "The Massage Therapist Penalty," all modeled directly on EPI's analysis of teachers. No one would publish these articles, however, because alleging significant pay penalties or premiums in nearly every occupation makes no sense. Such results say much more about the method of analysis than they do about America's labor market.

The control variables in EPI's statistical model obviously cannot explain the significant salary differences across occupations — otherwise there would not be so many occupations with large premiums or penalties. The model fails because salaries are determined by the supply and demand for specific skills that vary across occupations even after controlling for education. Therefore, in the context of comparing occupations, educational attainment is simply too imprecise as a skill measure. EPI's analysis treats every bachelor's degree as identical, and yet no one is surprised or upset that people with engineering degrees earn more on average than people with literature degrees, nor does anyone believe that every occupation requiring a college degree should be paid the same.

Yet these distinctions get muddled when comparing teacher salaries to those of private-sector employees. Around 95% of workers are in occupations where the average education level is below that of the typical teacher. Years of education (or highest degree attained) are good predictors of salaries for private-sector workers, and they're great predictors of pay for teachers, where salary schedules are often explicitly based on educational attainment. But in comparing teachers' salaries and private-sector pay, educational attainment is a skewed variable because it assumes that quantity of education equals quality of education.

Indeed, the problem is even more complicated: While teachers with more formal education earn more than less-educated teachers, more-educated teachers are not necessarily better at teaching. As the Urban Institute's Matthew Chingos puts it, "The fact that teachers with master's degrees are no more effective in the classroom, on average, than their colleagues without advanced degrees is one of the most consistent findings in education research."

Alternative measures of skill indicate how fragile EPI's results are. The Bureau of Labor Statistics assesses the skill requirements of hundreds of U.S. occupations, grading them on the General Schedule scale that is used in setting federal salaries. The BLS concludes that teaching positions demand skills that are roughly a GS-8 on the federal scale, with average GS levels ranging from 8.2 to 8.4 depending on the type of teacher.

The chart below shows the BLS grades of a variety of occupations graphed against the median annual wage paid in those occupations. To tighten the analysis further, only occupations with an average educational attainment of a bachelor's degree or more are included. Once again, there is significant variation in annual salaries even among jobs with similar skill requirements. Only half of occupations are paid within 10% of what their profession's BLS grade predicts. In other words, it's normal for occupational salaries to be above or below what occupational skill requirements might predict, and we could hardly assume that every deviation is evidence that an occupation is improperly paid. Unlike in the EPI analysis, however, teachers (the black dots on the chart) receive a salary premium of 9% once their shorter work year is accounted for. So not only are skill measures inadequate to explain pay variation across occupations, but the specific choice of skill measure can actually change the direction of the result.

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As more variables are accounted for, the weakness of EPI's model becomes more evident. Texas A&M economist Lori Taylor finds that teachers are nearly twice as likely as other college graduates to live in rural areas, where both wages and the cost of living are lower. In Taylor's analysis, controlling tightly for geography reduces the teacher salary gap by nine percentage points, because it more accurately compares teacher salaries to those of other professionals in the areas where teachers live and work.

EPI also understates the critical role of fringe benefits, especially pensions. According to the National Income and Product Accounts (NIPA), which are the official ledger books of the U.S. economy, employees in public education received benefits — inclusive of the future pension benefit they accrue each year — equal to 45% of their annual wages. In the private sector, benefits averaged only 19% of wages. By itself, this benefit advantage is sufficient to negate a teacher salary penalty of up to 17%.

In sum, EPI's "pay gap" reports do not meaningfully inform the debate over teacher compensation. Unless one is willing to accept that nurses are overpaid, that telemarketers are underpaid, and that engineering majors should be paid the same as literature majors, then one cannot accept the claim that teachers suffer from a 21% salary gap.

.....

 

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I do expect to see some programs contract.  The physical, hands on, nature of football will also be a consideration as admins evaluate their options 

 

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10 minutes ago, DT said:

I do expect to see some programs contract.  The physical, hands on, nature of football will also be a consideration as admins evaluate their options 

 

Thanks for sharing, comrade.

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25 minutes ago, DT said:

I do expect to see some programs contract.  The physical, hands on, nature of football will also be a consideration as admins evaluate their options 

 

Football has always been hands on and physical.  I don’t think South Newton, Elwood, Shelbyville, and every other you’ve put on your “list” are clamoring for flag football...

 

Football is also about team building, chemistry, and camaraderie in addition to execution.

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10 hours ago, Muda69 said:

So in other words you believe government schools should receive a huge boost in funding, and that government school teachers should receive a huge boost in salaries.   

 

Should have already happened.

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2 hours ago, Gipper said:

What don’t you consider educators part of the free market system?

Because the vast, vast majority of them are government employees.  Public sector vs. private sector.

The government education edifice is not a free market system.

 

56 minutes ago, AG said:

Should have already happened.

Ok, so give me some number for this huge boost?  25%? 50% 100%?

And where will these extra billions come from?

 

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13 hours ago, Muda69 said:

Because the vast, vast majority of them are government employees.  Public sector vs. private sector.

The government education edifice is not a free market system.

 

Ok, so give me some number for this huge boost?  25%? 50% 100%?

And where will these extra billions come from?

 

Well we can start with the 2.27 billion reserve that was in state coffers at the end of June last year, which was the end/start of the fiscal year.

There's also a SEVERE staff shortage in the Indiana Department of Corrections, but the state also refuses to do anything about that either. Seems to be a trend in this state.

Maybe they'll actually use some of that money to help with the Corona virus situation.

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4 minutes ago, AG said:

Well we can start with the 2.27 billion reserve that was in state coffers at the end of June last year, which was the end/start of the fiscal year.

Maybe they'll actually use some of that money to help with the Corona virus situation.

It is called a "reserve" for a reason.  IMHO such funds are not to be used to increase government employee salaries due to political pressure.  

Agree on this current pandemic being a legitimate use for such funds, depending on what that use is.

 

 

17 minutes ago, NICParentalFigure said:

So if public teachers leave the profession who will educate our youth? We are already in a teacher shortage in Indiana!

Ever hear about homeschooling?  Private schools?  Parochial/religious schools?

 

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23 hours ago, Muda69 said:

It is called a "reserve" for a reason.  IMHO such funds are not to be used to increase government employee salaries due to political pressure.  

Agree on this current pandemic being a legitimate use for such funds, depending on what that use is.

 

 

Ever hear about homeschooling?  Private schools?  Parochial/religious schools?

 

If you ever would like to see a country that would be severely mismanaged by the haves and woefully unrepresented by the have nots, you'd have this in your case Mr. Muda69.  

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33 minutes ago, Robert said:

If you ever would like to see a country that would be severely mismanaged by the haves and woefully unrepresented by the have nots, you'd have this in your case Mr. Muda69.  

I disagree, Mr. Robert.

Isn't the USA currently severely mismanaged by the "haves"?  And why do you believe homeschooling and private/parochial/religious education would accelerate this trend?

 

 

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1 hour ago, Robert said:

If you ever would like to see a country that would be severely mismanaged by the haves and woefully unrepresented by the have nots, you'd have this in your case Mr. Muda69.  

Good luck, Robert as I see you are playing chess with a pigeon today...

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On 3/18/2020 at 8:45 AM, Muda69 said:

It is called a "reserve" for a reason.  IMHO such funds are not to be used to increase government employee salaries due to political pressure.  

Agree on this current pandemic being a legitimate use for such funds, depending on what that use is.

 

 

Ever hear about homeschooling?  Private schools?  Parochial/religious schools?

 

So those us us who cannot afford private school or are able to stay home with our kids because of a job supposed to do? That is why  those option you give are not actually possible for an over whelming majority of people. Public school is the only realistic option for thousands of kids in Indiana.

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48 minutes ago, NICParentalFigure said:

So those us us who cannot afford private school or are able to stay home with our kids because of a job supposed to do? That is why  those option you give are not actually possible for an over whelming majority of people. Public school is the only realistic option for thousands of kids in Indiana.

Private charity and other low cost alternatives.

Let the free and open market work.  For once.

 

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1 hour ago, NICParentalFigure said:

So those us us who cannot afford private school or are able to stay home with our kids because of a job supposed to do? That is why  those option you give are not actually possible for an over whelming majority of people. Public school is the only realistic option for thousands of kids in Indiana.

Spot on.  I have long commutes to my office and don’t have the time, but frankly I prefer all of the advantages public schools provide.

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