The Solution to the Education Budget Crisis!

Governor Gregoire and Superintendent Dorn can thank this guy:

Tom Farber gives a lot of tests. He's a calculus teacher, after all.
So when administrators at Rancho Bernardo, his suburban San Diego high school, announced the district was cutting spending on supplies by nearly a third, Farber had a problem. At 3 cents a page, his tests would cost more than $500 a year. His copying budget: $316. But he wanted to give students enough practice for the big tests they'll face in the spring, such as the Advanced Placement exam.

"Tough times call for tough actions," he says. So he started selling ads on his test papers: $10 for a quiz, $20 for a chapter test, $30 for a semester final.

San Diego magazine and The San Diego Union-Tribune featured his plan just before Thanksgiving, and Farber came home from a few days out of town to 75 e-mail requests for ads. So far, he has collected $350. His semester final is sold out.

As a first grade teacher I can easily see how this could be brought down to my grade level:

"What letter is this, Johnny?"
"P!"
"And what does P stand for...?"
"P'Zone, available only from Pizza Hut!"
"Good boy! Here's a coupon."

The branding opportunities abound. Yay!

The Salary Gap

Here’s a spin-off from the post I did yesterday looking at teacher and administrator salary averages over the last 35 years here in Washington State.

We’ve heard a lot in the past few years about how CEO salaries are outpacing those of the workers by an ungodly percentage; this article gives a good overview. I was curious to see if that applied on our level, too.

Here are the average salaries for central office administrators, principals, and teachers from 1973-1974 and the current school year:

	1973-1974	2007-2008
Central Office	$19,540	$101,475
Principals	$17,368	$92,103
Teachers	$11,295	$49,903

This table shows the teacher salary as a percentage of the central office and principal salaries for the two years above (teacher salary/other salary):

	Central Office	Principals
73-74	57.8%	65.03%
07-08	49.18%	54.18%

So what does it mean?

In 1973, the average teacher made about 58% of the salary of the average superintendent. This year, the average teacher makes less than half of the average supe.

In 1973 the average teacher made 65% of the average principal. Now it’s 54%.

You could argue, then, that teacher salaries have not kept pace with administrative salaries. You could argue further that, given how the state funds administration, that this means that local money is being poured into administrator salaries at an increasingly aggressive pace.

The argument that I’d get from WASA and AWSP is that we need to attract quality people to the principalship and beyond by offering a quality salary. I won’t disagree with the point, but if you’re an administrator it’s also not a very good argument to make because it’s so damnably easy to turn on its head: don’t we also need to attract good people into the classroom by offering them a competitive salary as well?

I don’t know if these numbers matter, or if I’m reading them correctly. I think there’s something there, but I’m not sure what.

Any thoughts?