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Is the Mackinac Center report accurate?

Wed, 01/06/2010 - 09:59 — meethr

By Julie Mack | Kalamazoo Gazette
October 07, 2009, 9:14AM
Here's Detroit News columnist Nolan Finley's provocative take on Michigan teacher pay and benefits, which is headlined "Teacher perks bleed budget dry."

He references a report from the Mackinac Center, but here's a quibble with that report - from what I can tell, the numbers from the underlying source don't check out.

The Mackinac Center report relies on numbers from the American Legislative Exchange Council, which in turn cites salary figures comes from the National Center for Educational Statistics. Page 27 of the Legislative Exchange Council report lists Michigan's average 2006-07 teacher salary as $58,482 compared to a national average of $46,593, a difference of $11,889.

But the table I found on the nces.ed.gov has different numbers. It lists Michigan’s average 2006-07 teacher salary as $54,895, compared to a national average of $50,819, a difference of $4,876.

That’s in the range reported by two other sources. An April 2009 report from the U.S. Census says that Michigan teachers are the seventh-highest paid teachers in the nation, with an average salary of $54,739 compared to a national average of $49,026, a difference of $5,713, based on 2006 numbers. The National Education Association's list for the 2007-08 school year ranks Michigan as 11th, with an average salary of $56,096, compared to a national average of $52,308, a difference of $3,788.

Incidentally, for those who would like to see Michigan teacher salaries move more in line with the national average, that's already happening. While Michigan teachers continue to be paid more than the national average, their ranking is definitely slipping. According to the NCES chart, teacher pay nationally increased 0.8 percent beyond the inflation rate between fall 1999-2000 and 2006-07, while Michigan teacher pay dropped 7.2 percent when taking inflation into account. (To be clear: That doesn’t mean that Michigan teachers actually earned less in 2006, but their pay lagged behind inflation by 7.2 percent.) That was the biggest drop nationally, according to the NCES chart.