I'm afraid I can't get as exercised about this report of Indiana teacher salaries as Masson's Blog seems to be. For one thing, the numbers don't seem that bad to me:
During the 2004-05 school year, Hoosier teachers were paid an average salary of $46,591 -- 17th in the nation and a 1.7 percent increase from the previous year. Meanwhile, the cost of living increased 3.1 percent.Indiana teacher salaries fell short of the national average, $47,808, and the state has been slipping.
17th in the nation, out of 50, considering the state's size and the standard of living here? And $46,591 compared to $47,808? Do those figures justify alarm bells?
In the second place, state-by-state comparisons are meaningless. What really matters is what teachers are paid in Indiana compared with comparable professionals in the state (and we could make it even more meaningful by using district-by-district salaries and the local economies; the standard of living in Fort Wayne is not the same as the one in Indianapolis).
I don't mean to disparage the work teachers do or argue that we shouldn't pay them as much as we can. But those are school district decisions based on a lot of factors not taken into account by the National Education Association, a teachers' union whose job is to lobby for salaries as high as possible.
