In the News: The Pay Leaders Deserve

In U.S. News and World Report, Rick Hess responds towards Boston Globe’s revelation that Boston’s 16 charter-school leaders? earned total compensation of $150,000 to $200,000 in 2016. Hess counters the say that these school leaders are wildly overpaid by asking if $200,000 is basically that big of a number taking into consideration the impressive academic gains Boston charters have accomplished, despite lacking the machinery of a big school district.

It could possibly be that terrific school leaders are underpaid C which schools get it right. In a different brand of work, people who have the skill-sets and stamina to tackle demanding leadership roles are typically in scarce supply.

Interestingly, the latest report because of the U.S. Department of Education released this week suggests Boston charter leaders’ paychecks would be the exception, not the norm. In 2015-16, the nation’s average annual salary of public school principals was $96,400 inside a traditional public school, as compared with $88,000 for charter school principals.

Salary comparisons are incomplete without considering total compensation packages, however. Within the Fall 2013 issue of Education Next, Koedel, Ni, and Podgursky took an in-depth dive within the form of public school system pension systems, showing that school administrators can accrue considerable pension wealth from a defined-benefit (DB) pension plan.

Pension wealth is higher and even more back-loaded for varsity leaders his or her pay is above it is for teachers and, crucially, higher right after a job. Even though it is well understood that this final-average-salary DB plans favor long-term teachers over short-term teachers, what has passed largely unnoticed is that these plans also inherently favor administrators over teachers. Promoted individuals, who have large late-career salary increases, benefit disproportionately originating from a formula that determines value of the annuity good highest couple of years of earnings.