Thursday, June 10, 2010

Education costs

Keep this chart in mind the next time you hear calls from the teacher's unions for more money.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

According to attached website, inflation rate from 1970 was 470%.
Maybe the salaries are not too high.

http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Calculators/Inflation_Rate_Calculator.asp#calcresults

libertarian neocon said...

Bob the above data is already adjusted for inflation. Please actually read what we post before you retort.

Unknown said...

sorry didn't pick up on title. Not being an economist, isn't the salary appropriate based on inflation. Why should the scores go up when salaries go up due to inflation? Chart seems to be misleading.

jerry said...

You still don't get the chart. When something is inflation adjusted it means inflation is taken out of the calculation. That means it is as if inflation did not occur and therefore pure salary increase.

What the chart says is that spending more on teacher salaries has no effect on student performance.

That is not to say teachers should not receive a decent salary but since the salaries have no market based component, it becomes a problem to determine what that level should be. Always a problem with central planning. In fact, a fatal flaw.

Since the teachers union always claim they should be better paid and it's for the children, this chart hows the relationship does not exist.