April 3, 2008, 9:22 am

I thought it was kind of interesting that upon reading this McKinsey & Co study (currently the top one in the list) on education, Kevin Drum and a number of other left 'o center blogs pulled out this one chart to highlight. It shows starting teacher pay (i.e. out of college) as a percent of the economy's average)

The author's of the study argue that the countries higher on this list also have better student results. Now, I will confess that this is a pretty interesting finding in the study -- that starting teacher pay is more important than teacher pay in later years, because the key is to attract talented people right out of college away from other professions. Interesting.

But here is the quite fascinating selection bias by the lefty blogs: I have read the whole report, and this is absolutely the only chart in the whole study that in any way, shape, or form might be interpreted as a call for higher government education spending. Even more interesting is what these bloggers left out. This is the other half of the starting teacher pay analysis Drum et. al. chose note to include, and makes clear that even this chart is not a call for more total spending:

South Korea and Singapore employ fewer teachers than other systems; in effect, this ensures that they can spend more money on each teacher at an equivalent funding level. Both countries recognize that while class size has relatively little impact on the quality of student outcomes (see above), teacher quality does. South Korea's student-to-teacher ration is 30:1, compared to an OECD average of 17.1, enabling it in effect to double teacher salaries while maintaining the same overall funding level as other OECD countries.... Singapore has pursued a similar strategy but has also front-loaded compensation. THis combination allows it to spend less on primary education than almost any other OECD and yet still be able to attract strong candidates into the teaching profession. In addition, because Singapore and South Korea need fewer teachers, they are also in a position to be more selective about who becomes a teacher. This, in turn, increases the status of teaching, making the profession even more attractive.

Whoops! Don't want our friends at the NEA to see that! Most of the study turns on McKinsey's finding that teacher quality drives student results, way ahead of any other factor, from class size to socioeconomic background:

Well, now the NEA might be getting really nervous. Something like this might cause parents to do something rash, like demand that low-performing teachers get fired. Gasp.

Anyway, to get back to the cherry-picking and selection bias issue, the study is pretty clear that it thinks that "more spending" is a failed strategy for improving public education



If school choice is off the table, then I would be very supportive of a program to increase starting teacher pay, funded by larger class sizes and substantial reductions in useless administrators and assistant principals. Anyway, it is kind of an interesting study, though you may find the pdf file format really irritating to try to read. Lots of funny formatting.