Flashback – Teacher Pay

[The value of a teacher reflects how much we value education. I wrote about this in January 2013.]

Here is the problem. Teachers have one of the most important jobs in society, teaching our children.  They must have a college degree, but their pay and benefits are comparable to those who work in unionized manufacturing jobs. Professional football players and other entertainers provide a service that is totally unnecessary for our survival, yet they are paid ten to twenty times as much as teachers with top end athletes getting tens of millions of dollars. It challenges our sense of fairness. How could we let that happen?

Maybe the answer lies in behavior, specifically in the dimension of perspective.

If we decide to take our family to a college or professional football game, it could easily cost us around $500. That includes 4 tickets, parking, food and drinks and a souvenir or two. Of course this assumes that we can even get tickets for a single game, because in some places the demand is so high.  This is for a single game and doesn’t even address the idea of season tickets. On the other hand, if the city decided to raise our taxes by $500 per year to pay the teachers better, most people would join the mob storming city hall in protest. (This link shows a non-scientific poll of Massachusetts voters when the governor suggested raising income taxes to support schools and highways. They were very unhappy.) 

But our willingness to support our favorite team doesn’t stop there. We will set aside 3 or more hours each weekend to cheer them on. We buy their clothing, intently watch and critique the players, coaches and officials. Players who miss blocks or tackles, players who drop passes and coaches who don’t make it to a bowl game or a playoff game are fired with our approval. The stars have us hanging on their every word and buying the products they endorse. On the other hand, ask us to commit an hour per month or less to attend a PTA meeting or a teacher’s conference, and we react negatively or indifferently. It seems like an imposition.

Finally, teachers do not do one of the most important jobs in society alone. They are part of a team that provides that service. The team consists of teachers, parents and the students themselves. Asking teachers to do it alone is like asking the offense to win games without a defense. Do parents believe they are part of the educational team or are they too quick to let the teachers do the hard work and then side with their child against the teacher when problems arise? Should parents be held accountable for daily assignments and for student preparation, both in terms of learning and of their attitude toward learning? If there were more parental involvement, if children arrived at school expecting to learn rather than expecting to be entertained, would there be such a cry for smaller class sizes?

Perhaps teachers aren’t paid what they should be based on their contribution to society. Perhaps athletes and other entertainers are paid too much. We are the ones making those decisions by what we choose to support and what we choose to ignore. Again it’s about our behavior: our values, our choices, our perspective.

[Over the past 6 months or so, America has seen many statues torn down. One question might be: how will this affect the 14-year-old African-American student of today? Will a greater percentage be motivated to finish high school with the skills needed to get a good job or go on to college? Will they choose to prioritize education over being accused of “acting white” by their peers? Will their parents actively support the children and their teachers in those goals? Will they perhaps even become role models for all younger students. The answer will come in four years. This may be yet another area to positively channel that anger and frustration to achieve improvements in this tumultuous time.

The message, as it has been for the past 940 entries to all Americans, is how much success we can achieve on our own with strong behavior in the key dimensions.]

Let's Not Become Victims

Last Tuesday was the celebration (?) of women not being paid as much as men.  It seems odd that people would go out of their way to make themselves feel bad, but that’s the way it is.  Maybe taking on the status of victimhood draws sympathy or gives one a chance to express pent up anger and resentment, but it doesn’t really do anything to solve the problem.  What’s worse was the blatant exaggeration to make the point – 20% indeed!

But that’s what politicians were telling us last summer and for many years, and there is no reason to change the story now.  CBS proudly reported:  “The gender pay gap is a well documented phenomenon” according to a new study by an organization called Glassdoor.  The lead was that a survey of half a million people in America revealed that a woman earn 76 cents for every dollar a man earns.  But they then added, the “statistic may be slightly misleading, in that it doesn't compare men and women on an apples-to-apples basis, such as comparing women with similar levels of education and experience with men in the same situation.”  Later in the article this apples-to-apples comparison yields a real difference of 5.4%.  Another source using similar calculations had come up with about 1% less.

In a different article they elaborate on this:  “Yet even when controlled for those factors and other issues (such as employers and job titles), women earn more than 5 percent less than men.”  So where does the 20% number come from, except from an attempt to purposely make the gap look a lot worse by using an invalid comparison?  Apparently trying to soften this discrepancy, they argue:  “Male preschool and kindergarten teachers earn $16.33 per hour, compared with $14.42 per hour for their female counterparts.”  Instead of providing further evidence for a deliberate gap, this should strike us as odd.  Don’t almost all kindergarten teachers belong to a union that negotiates wages for schoolteachers?  I’m sure their contracts don’t say, “Just pay the guys a little more.”  As an attempted example of a valid comparison, this statistic is incredible.

Yet people continue to make these false claims about the size of the gap, despite the ease of finding information like this from Forbes to clearly explain the misconceptions, both from faulty calculations and from poor understanding of the situation.  “President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act in 1963, making sex-based discrimination in pay illegal.”  We don’t need more laws; we need better enforcement.  The government is quick to point out to a business owner when there are fewer than the required number of handicap parking spaces, but for nine presidential administrations this wage-gap problem persists.

Of course advertisers have been jumping on the bandwagon to promote the falsehood.  Several businesses showed support by offering a 20% discount for women on the wage-gap “holiday” last week.  Some say those businesses are doing this to “try to raise awareness” about the unfairness.  Get real! – They are not trying to raise awareness; they are trying to sell stuff and to develop a base of loyal customers.

Now it’s not right that any woman with the same background and experience should be paid less than any man for doing exactly the same job.  Until the 4% or 5% becomes zero the problem is not solved.  (Nor would it be right if positions were reversed.)  However, it’s also not right to intentionally mislead women by exaggerating the size of the problem as a ploy to gain support for political or commercial gain.

More Economic Reality

Last time I told of how some fast food workers were demonstrating for a $15 wage, while in parts of North Dakota where the economy was strong and unemployment very low, one Wal-Mart was offering over $17 per hour starting pay to attract workers.  It’s purely a matter of the supply of willing and able workers falling short of the demand.  Many of the able-bodied in that part of the state can work in jobs related to oil production for far more money.  Accordingly, the best way to get a good-paying job is to have skills or talents either superior to many others or rare in society.  Examples include top salespeople making the best commissions and star athletes winning tournaments or big contracts, but the principle generally extends to the rest of us who expect to get rewarded for a good education and hard work.  (Of course some get rewarded for being favored by the boss or being related to the owner, but much of that is out of our control.)

That supply and demand dynamic works well if the jobs exist, but where do jobs come from?  Politicians would like us to believe that if elected, they will create jobs.  Later, if the job situation improves, they take credit; if jobs disappear, they blame evil corporations, the general economy or other politicians – or sometimes they make up numbers and take credit anyway!  The truth is that government does not create jobs (except more government jobs).  Politicians can only make it easier, less burdensome, for businesses, especially small businesses to operate and grow.

Do businesses create jobs?  I’ve often heard people, especially during the recession, complain that if Apple or another big company has so much cash on hand, why don’t they use some of it to hire more people.  These complainers don’t take it to the next step by asking what the new employees would do.  Would they help to make more products, products that would just accumulate in a warehouse somewhere?  That might work in the short term, but then those people, plus others, would be laid off until the products sold.  With no one to buy the products or no one interested in the extra service the companies have no reason to hire anyone.  They will continue to accumulate cash while they advertise in an attempt to grow; but they need more sales to hire more workers.

The ultimate conclusion then is that customers create jobs!  Companies must have someone interested in buying a product or service to justify hiring someone to produce that product or provide that service.  The lemonade stand at the bottom of a dead end street is pretty much doomed to failure.  Apple without people lining up to buy the latest phone has no reason to maintain their level of stores, distribution, research and advertising staff.  A large majority of new start-up businesses fail in the first 2-3 years not primarily because they are poorly run, but because they are unable to attract enough customers to cover their costs.  Many entrepreneurs will live on a minimal salary or no pay at all in an attempt to get their business off the ground, and that means building a customer base.

No matter what we hear from politicians over the next 14 months and beyond, government does not create jobs.  Customers are responsible for private sector jobs and our jobs depend on those customers being happy and coming back.  Unfortunately too few executives grasp this concept well enough to value the workers who make their products or otherwise have face-to-face contact with their customers and to treat those workers with the respect and honesty necessary to motivate continuous caring and high performance.

Interesting Comparison

Maybe it’s because I’ve written a few essays about wages this month that information about babysitting caught my attention.  I first heard it as one of those closing thoughts after the radio news and got home to look it up.  Sure enough I found the source (care.com) and the average babysitting rate in the US is about $13.50 per hour, using the latest reported numbers for 2014, and higher in many larger cities.  No only that, it has grown by 28% in the last five years!

Having had some experience in the field many years ago when the pay was considerably less (but probably comparable when adjusted for inflation), I knew that this is pretty good pay to watch someone else’s one, two or three kids in their own house, get them to bed on time and spend the remaining hours watching television and possibly checking out someone else’s refrigerator and pantry for snacks.

This was not the first thing that came to mind, however.  Instead I asked myself, “How does this compare to the pay of childcare workers who usually are expected to have a higher level of experience and are expected to entertain and often educate wide awake children in a less familiar environment while meeting a slew of government regulations?”  I haven’t heard much about the plight of these workers lately and thought perhaps they were doing better.

I didn’t wonder for long.  The US Bureau of Labor Statistics came to the rescue.  “The median hourly wage for childcare workers in the US was $9.38 per hour in May 2012. The median wage is the wage at which half the workers in an occupation earned more than that amount and half earned less. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $7.85 per hour, and the top 10 percent earned more than $14.19.”  Comparing that to the average babysitter number in 2012, $12.02 per hour, it looks like they are somewhat behind.

How comparable is the workload?  A couple of sources gave a rough idea of state requirements.  In North Carolina the limit is a ratio of 1:5 caregivers for infants and 1:10 for 2 year olds.  In Colorado the ratio is 1:5 for children up to 3 years of age.  So in some states they can be responsible for up to 10 children hopping around (possibly having to simultaneously put up with irritating bosses or coworkers) and still get paid less on average than the babysitter sitting on the couch on Saturday night texting another babysitter on another couch while both keep one ear open for kids.  Where’s the justice in that?

This is just an observation.  Perhaps no conclusion can fairly be drawn except that relative pay does not always reflect relative contribution to society.  People love to point out that teachers earn less than professional athletes, and that doesn’t seem right.  What is right?  In many cases nobody really knows.

How Large is the So-Called Gender Gap?

Last time I introduced the idea of a psycho fact, information that has been so frequently and commonly passed along that it is accepted as true without the need for further investigation or proof.  It falls into the category of “everyone knows that” because everyone says it or hears it so often.  The textbook example is the idea that we use only a small fraction of our brains and have so much untapped potential.  (This notion is a staple among the self-help gurus and motivational speaker crowd.)

Another bit of information that has been repeated so many times that it has become accepted as fact is that a woman is paid only 77 cents for every dollar a man earns, usually implying that this is true for exactly the same job even when age, education, experience, and all other factors are considered.  Related to this is the idea that men outnumber women in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields due both to societal pressures portraying these fields as unfeminine and to a belief by some that women have less aptitude in these areas.

The most recent challenge to the first idea appeared in Forbes as an in-depth examination of the employment and salary data from the UK, which shows, when comparing all male workers to all female workers, a similar gap to that found in the US; and it explains why the UK Statistics Authority characterizes this conclusion as “highly misleading.”  They emphasize the need for accurate statistics as a guide to government policy.  To do that “we need to know how much of that [gap] is because of choices that people make over working hours, what job they do, the flexibility they might prefer over pay and so on, and then see what’s left which might be the result of direct discrimination.”  Unless such a careful comparison is made, the numbers are worthless in guiding policy decisions.

Digging deeper into the data, the problems are clarified a bit.  “Given the society we do have, rather than the one that some of us might like, it’s really no surprise at all that more women work part time than men, what with juggling child care duties. And it’s also no surprise at all that part timers make less per hour than full timers.”  Some data actually contradicts the premise showing that women working part time actually make 3.4 % more than men do, but this is offset by the fact that 4 times as many women opt for part time work.  This choice factor is only one component of a highly complex calculation and many other factors must be considered in order to make a fair comparison.  The simplistic comparison of all men to all women results in the popular, but “highly misleading,” 77-cents-due-primarily-to-discrimination conclusion that many in the US immediately jump to.

On the second point, a recent report from the PBS News Hour challenges the notion that STEM fields are unattractive to women and that they are therefore so greatly outnumbered by men.  “On closer inspection, it turns out that these ‘truths’ are nothing more than assumptions, and that these assumptions are inconsistent with the facts.”  They go on to tell about, and show graphically, some STEM fields and academic majors where women actually outnumber men.  Despite these facts, well-intentioned institutions continue to set up educational opportunities and other strategies to try to deprogram young girls from hating math.  It’s a solution to a non-problem, often funded by taxpayer dollars or charitable donations that could be better directed.

What is the purpose of the constant repetition of these two related psycho facts?  They likely remain popular because it places women, in general, in a victim status giving some the opportunity to vent and to take out their frustrations when things don’t seem to be going their way.  It is not affirming, not inspiring, not supportive, but it is not intended to be.  Rather, the purpose seems to be to give power to the rescuers who promise results through strikes, protests, or legislative action; rescuers whose main interest is not justice or equality, but retention and growth of their own political popularity and power, even if it is based on a poorly developed and “highly misleading” statistic.

That is not to say there is no discrimination at all, but those who rely on these sloppy generalizations choose to wallow in victimhood and be taken advantage of by manipulative public figures rather than taking responsibility for their own individual situations.

Equal Pay for Women

Equal pay for women is not only the right thing to do; it’s the law.  Yet we continue to hear stories of glass ceilings and inequality.  The latest comes in this USA Today article reviewing progress in the IT field.  The claim seems to be that women are underrepresented and underpaid, but as usual in these stories, a closer look shows some discrepancies in that generalization.

The article’s introduction tells of a woman who was an early adapter in terms of computer education.  Her explanation is that today there is “not that mental block or stigma that women in my generation held in what we were supposed to do."  In her opinion, women’s avoidance of the computer science major was an interest and a comfort issue, but now that’s changing.  The article continues:  “Even with advances, a gender gap still exists. An executive summary prepared for Georgetown University's Center on Education and the Workforce notes that women represent 23% of the workers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) professions. But women make up 48% of workers in all occupations across the board.”

This implies a problem of exclusion, but from another source we learn that:  “According to a new report from the Census Bureau, foreign-born Americans are earning STEM degrees in disproportionately large numbers, compared to the native-born U.S. population.”  They account for 16.5% of the population, but 33% of graduates with engineering degrees, 27% with degrees in computers, math, and statistics."  Furthermore, part of the immigration debate involves the disproportionate number of international students receiving advanced STEM degrees.  Over 60% of graduate students in computer science in American universities are not American citizens.  Do these facts imply a similar kind of exclusion, a citizenship or place-of-birth gap? – Of course not.  In fact universities and employers favor American citizens over those requiring visas.  The underrepresentation of women that is complained of is an artifact of past lack of interest in the field plus, perhaps, a problem with the overall US education system.

What about the pay issue?  The USA Today article states that:  “On average, of the 15,000 employers contacted through an online poll, the survey found that male tech workers made $95,900 compared with $87,500 for women.”  Although we don’t know how well controlled or how representative this survey was, that does sound unfair.  The next sentence clarifies as follows:  However, the compensation gender gap has narrowed, with average salaries equal for male and female tech pros with comparable levels of experience and education and parallel job titles.” [Emphasis added.]  It’s easy to understand from the prior information that if women once avoided computer degrees, they would not yet have the tenure or experience that some men do.  Hence the discrepancy.  Where other factors are equal, no problem exists, and there is no reason to search for or accuse glass ceilings or other forms of covert discrimination.

Despite research findings to the contrary, based on true comparisons using like education, experience, etc., the issue of the gender gap continues to arise, often raised by politicians and advocates, based on general data or anecdotal evidence.  People believe and repeat the claim.  But why would anyone seek out reasons to portray herself or himself as a victim?  Victimhood is not a solution.  It’s only a path to resentment, a barrier to constructive problem solving, and an opportunity for those same politicians and advocates to gain power from other’s abdication of responsibility.