What do we know about public teacher compensation?

Abstract

The brief's key findings are: (1) Whether public teachers are over- or under-paid is a source of lively debate. (2) This study sheds new light on the topic by using more accurate estimates of benefit costs. (3) The results show that teachers earn roughly the same as similar private sector workers. (4) However, given cuts to pension benefits for teachers hired in the past decade, relative compensation is likely to decline over time. (5) And uncompetitive compensation may make it harder to recruit high-quality teachers, potentially leading to worse outcomes for students.