National Study Finds Teachers Highly Educated but Poorly Paid

Those who can, teach. That's the message of a new report issued by Education Testing Service (ETS), which confirms that teachers have literacy skills comparable to professions that pay much higher salaries -- including physicians, lawyers, and engineers.

The report analyses the literacy and numeracy skills of America's teachers. The study looked at three different measures of literacy using the National Adult Literacy Survey. Among the most significant findings:

• Teachers scored significantly higher than the general population in literacy skills -- on average 58 points higher on a 500-point scale.
• Teachers with a four-year degree score slightly higher than all other adults with a four-year degree.
• Teachers with a graduate degree score the same as all other adults with a graduate degree.

The report confirms that teachers have literacy skills comparable to professions that pay much higher salaries, including physicians, lawyers, and engineers. Teachers have higher literary skills, on average, than many managers, administrators, and real estate professionals.

The study looked at three kinds of literacy: prose literacy, or understanding and using information from texts, such as newspaper articles; document literacy, or understanding and using information from materials, such as maps, tables, and graphs; and quantitative literacy, understanding and using numerical information, such as figuring out a tip or determining interest rates from an advertisement.

More than one-half of teachers scored at the highest two levels (of five in the range). About 84% scored within the highest three levels. Only about 15% scored at Level 2, and about 1% at Level 1.

The report also highlights the sharp discrepancy between the compensation provided teachers and other professionals. Teachers scoring at Level 5 on the prose scale earned an average of $574 a week, compared to $796 a week for other college graduates. The difference for teachers who scored at Level 5 on the quantitative scale was even greater, $618 a week, compared to $947 a week.

The ETS report concludes, "We employ teachers for pay that is well below the market rate for their levels of prose, document, and quantitative problem solving. With the impending shortage of teachers and apparent competitiveness of their skills, we need to give more attention to what we pay them, and to recognize the many options these capable people have in the American marketplace."

"The report turns conventional wisdom on its head and provides the first objective evidence of what we have known all along," said NEA Vice President Reg Weaver.

The study is available online at http://www.ets.org/research/pic.

Posted March 26, 1999