College Instructors Not Getting Rich, But Downtrodden A Stretch
$69k community college instructor, union president laments poor pay in newspaper essay
A community college professor and president of the local faculty union recently co-authored an op-ed that talked about poor pay and poor working conditions for teachers. It was published on the Traverse City Record-Eagle’s website and more recently on the Michigan Education Association's website.
Brandon Everest is a social science instructor at Northwestern Michigan College. With his co-author Carolyn Moss, a registered nurse, he opened the op-ed by disputing the local phrase “a view of the bay is half the pay.”
“On behalf of everyone who experiences the impact, we beg to differ,” the op-ed stated. “Employees in Traverse City scorn the notion that location is an excuse for poor pay and poorer working conditions, and many of us stand our ground. ... As unionists maintain, economic inequality threatens not only to the American dream but our democracy. This is true across the country and our community.”
Everest made $69,723 in 2017-18 at Northwestern Michigan College. One math professor at the community college had a gross salary of $101,359 in 2017-18, according to state records.
Northwestern Michigan College is located within the jurisdiction of the Traverse City Area Public Schools district, which had 487 full-time K-12 teaching positions in 2018-19. Its instructors are represented by the Michigan Education Association.
Average teacher salary in the district was $63,322 in 2017-18, although teachers with more seniority and academic credentials can make a good deal more. But for many public school teachers, the benefits are just as valuable.
At Traverse City schools, if employees choose a higher deductible on their health care insurance benefit, they eliminate any co-pays or pay-period deductions. For an example, a Traverse City teacher could get regular health insurance and not pay anything for it by choosing the $1,000 deductible. The school district also would contribute $3,180 a year into that teacher’s health savings account, meaning that the teacher was getting health insurance with no out-of-pocket costs.
According to the state of Michigan, the top paid teacher at Traverse City’s school district made $91,488 in 2017-18. That included extra pay for accepting duties outside the contract, a common way for teachers to add to their income.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income in Traverse City was $53,327 from 2013 to 2017.
Everest didn’t return an email seeking comment.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
What You Really Need to Know about Michigan Charter Schools
MLive errs in comparison of academic performance
A recent MLive article claimed to offer “Everything you need to know about Michigan’s charter schools.” It didn’t do that, and worse, offered faulty data that leads readers to see charters in a more negative light than they deserve.
MLive should get credit for featuring some accurate information about charters – namely, that they serve greater shares of low-income and African American children than their counterparts in district schools. It also mentions, correctly, that charters are more commonly located in the metro Detroit area. But the story omits key basic facts about public school academies (the state’s legal name for charter schools). Chief among the omissions may be this: They only exist because parents have sought them out as favorable alternatives to their default education options.
The MLive article overlooks not only the role of parents’ judgment about school quality, but also the most credible research available. Instead, it creates a misleading and unflattering picture of charters by relying on a dubious analysis. In its only examination of academic performance, MLive sums up Michigan charter school test scores with this finding: “About 56% of charters had a lower overall passage rate than schools with similar characteristics. That compares to 41% of charters that outperformed their comparison group. For the remaining 3%, there was no difference in passage rates.”
The claim makes it sound like charter schools don’t fare well when compared to district schools serving students from similar demographics. The source for this claim is the Michigan Department of Education’s Parent Dashboard, an online tool that allows users to make visual judgments of different schools’ characteristics and results. But the tool is flawed.
Take for instance the 28 schools compared with Star International Academy, a Dearborn Heights brick-and-mortar charter school. More than 93% of its students are eligible for free or reduced-cost lunch due to family poverty, which is significant because poorer students tend to arrive at school with greater deficits of academic skills and knowledge. The department compares this school to a group which includes seven schools where less than half of students are economically disadvantaged. And seven of the comparison schools are located far away in the Upper Peninsula, while three others provide primarily online instruction.
According to the department, schools that are compared —“similar schools by student characteristics” — must serve the same grade level. Yet a school like Star International that offers grades K-12 can be matched up against campuses that serve only elementary, middle or high school students. Half of the formula for finding a similar school is based on student enrollment. Only 20% is determined by the share of students who come from economically disadvantaged families, with the remaining 30% split between similar student-teacher ratios and per-pupil spending.
The rationale behind this approach is puzzling. Where does research indicate that two schools of the same size should be expected to produce similar results, all else being equal? Take, for example, the collection of more than 700 Michigan schools that serve only grades K-5. The relationship between the number of students at a school and its average scores earned on the most recent M-STEP test is very weak.
Yet at least one matter of socioeconomic status clearly matters, and it’s included in the Mackinac Center’s Context and Performance Report Card. There is a strong relationship between a school’s percentage of students eligible for free lunch subsidies and its standardized test scores: A higher percentage means lower scores. The report card accounts for that relationship, and charter schools are disproportionately found among the highest and (to a lesser extent) lowest ratings on it.
Three studies provide the most rigorous assessments of Michigan charter school performance. The most recent is a University of Michigan study that looked at students who applied to attend one of the state’s 46 National Heritage Academies, all public charter schools. Those who won the random lottery for admission improved their math achievement measurably more than those who did not get in.
Two studies from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes didn’t use the same sort of gold-standard methods, but they do comprise the best available analyses of broader Michigan charter performance. CREDO matched students from different schools as “virtual twins,” based on a series of objective characteristics. The researchers’ 2013 statewide study found that those attending charter schools outperformed their district peers across the board. CREDO’s 2015 study reached the same conclusion about Detroit.
Any of these studies has a stronger case to be included in “everything you need to know about Michigan charter schools” than the suspect analysis MLive employed. But even they don’t tell as much as the fact that thousands of parents continue to hope in these schools and choose them as the best way to help their children succeed.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
More From CapCon