Is NEA Reading Its Own Research?

Fom our good friends over at the Education Intelligence Agency:

Last week, the National Education Association released its latest edition of Rankings & Estimates with the headline: "Teachers Take 'Pay Cut' as Inflation Outpaces Salaries." The subhead reads: "NEA President Warns Students Pay the Price with High Teacher Turnover."

I suppose it's hopeless to point out that NEA mistakes cause for effect. "High teacher turnover" means high-paid teachers retire and are replaced by low-paid rookies, thereby reducing the growth in the "average" salary. If I have two teachers earning $70,000 each, and one retires and I replace her with a teacher earning $35,000, the average salary has been reduced by 25 percent, but that's hardly an argument for a hike in pay.

But there's an even bigger reason why the average teacher salary doesn't rise to reflect the amount taxpayers are sinking into public education. NEA's own research provides it, but the union's self-interest prevents it from highlighting it in any context whatsoever.

America continues to hire armies of teachers.

EIA has illustrated this before, but public appear to school district hiring and firing practicesbear no relationship to the one factor that should drive them: student enrollment.

According to NEA's own estimates, student enrollment in the United States will grow this school year by a total of 349,452 students (0.7 percent). The number of classroom teachers is expected to grow by 62,443 (2.0 percent). That, my friends, is one new teacher for every 5.5 new students.

That's not even the most ridiculous statistic. Most of the enrollment growth is in secondary school, as the last of the Baby Boomers' children work their way through high school. Secondary school enrollment is expected to grow by 1.4 percent, while the number of secondary school teachers is expected to grow by only 1.0 percent.

Elementary school enrollment is expected to grown by only 88,595 students (0.3 percent), but we're planning to hire 49,965 more elementary school teachers (2.8 percent). That's one new K-8 teacher for every 1.8 new K-8 students.

This simply cannot be sustained. It's not beyond the realm of possibility that someday soon the marginal increase in teachers – in actual numbers, not percentage - will exceed the marginal increase in students.

This is not a new problem. In the last 10 years, elementary enrollment increased by a total of 4.2 percent. But the number of elementary school teachers increased by 19.1 percent.

Is any of this sinking in? I don't know, but last week's newspapers were filled with "surprising" enrollment figures from all across the country:

* "Florida school enrollment far below projection"

* "HISD enrollment down by 7,000 for fall semester" (Houston)

* "Traditional schools in DPS up 2 pupils" (Denver)

* "San Diego Unified, like many districts throughout California, is in a chronically declining enrollment phase."

Average salary increases will always appear smaller when spread among a growing number of employees. Once hired, there is a significant "enrollment lag" before the size of the labor force reflects a decrease or slowing in student enrollment. Thanks to tenure protections, reducing the workforce generally can happen only two ways: retirement and layoff of probationary teachers. Or what some people might term "high teacher turnover." We'll see more of it in the coming years.

The emphases are our own.