Make L.A. Schools Businesslike : Administrators, Not Teachers, Are Short on Earning Power

Los Angeles school teachers have been staging protests, including fasts and a testing boycott, to affirm their support of the union that is bargaining on their behalf for higher salaries. Union officials argue that there is pay inequity between teachers and administrators in the Los Angeles Unified School District. They are asking for a 12% pay increase for teachers, while the Board of Education is prepared to offer an increase of 10% contingent on the receipt of new state funds from Proposition 98.

Good teachers deserve higher salaries, but are they really being objective about their immediate demands? The average teacher in the district earns $36,663 per year, which is higher than the statewide and national averages. Beginning teachers’ salaries have increased markedly lately, from $13,700 in 1982-83 to $23,440 in the 1987-88 school year.

A teacher coming to the Los Angeles district with a master’s degree and nine years of teaching experience will make $41,024. After a relatively short probationary period, most teachers also attain tenure, guaranteeing them permanent job security. Surely this is “worth something” in lieu of extra salary when compared to the higher-earning professions where there is a risk of becoming unemployed if the business or an individual’s productivity falters.

It seems possible that the pay structure in the Los Angeles district could be redesigned to accommodate both teachers and administrators. If a highly qualified teacher wants to attain a higher salary without becoming an administrator, there should be ways to fulfill that teacher’s desires. Excellence in the classroom should be rewarded. This is preferable to the current policy of paying more for those who have put in more years or taken extra courses. Why not hold back increases for the least effective teachers in order to “overcompensate” the truly outstanding ones? Union leaders claim that it is difficult (or impossible) to identify teachers who are excellent, but that is a red herring. The school district has teacher-evaluation procedures in place, and everybody knows who the “best” teachers are.

A teacher now paid $41,024 can increase his or her salary substantially: an additional $2,000 for teaching a bilingual class, an additional $2,000 for teaching in a location designated by the school district as “hard to staff,” an additional $3,037 for coaching the school’s Academic Decathlon team. If the teacher works in a year-round school, he or she can teach six weeks of off-track time and earn an additional $2,949, bringing his or her yearly pay to $51,010.

If the salary schedule were redesigned to reward teachers for their abilities and performances in the classroom, an exemplary teacher now paid $51,000 could earn an even higher salary, one comparable to that of an administrator like the average elementary school principal, who earns $58,866 (though some principals earn much less).

The position of school principal is not just a step up on the teaching ladder. In order to become a principal, an applicant also must earn an administrative credential, which demonstrates that he or she has mastered various organizational and management skills. Applicants undergo rigorous testing, and only the top-rated candidates are selected by the Los Angeles school district. Their salaries are based on their levels of expertise. A candidate selected to serve as the top administrator at a school site has substantial responsibilities and should be rewarded according to his or her demonstrated competence. Many top principals would be highly valued as managers in the private sector, and the education field cannot afford to lose them.

Similarly, a district superintendent must have a set of skills that qualify him or her to direct the activities of numerous different branches of the district so that students, teachers, administrators and all other employees can function together in an educationally stimulating environment. The superintendent must understand the politics and economics of the district, its curriculum and its staff. If a district is deemed as failing--if test scores fall--the superintendent’s job is at risk.

Given this, the current salary for the superintendent of the Los Angeles district, $141,080, is justified. In fact, it is low by comparison to salaries that compensate similar responsibilities in the private sector.

The superintendent, Leonard M. Britton, administers a $3.5-billion budget and manages more than 57,000 employees. His responsibilities are comparable to those of the chief executive officer of a corporation with $3.5 billion in sales, yet Britton’s salary is much lower.

Drawing from the public records of companies listed as Fortune magazine’s top 500 industrial corporations in the United States, we see that Teledyne Inc. in Los Angeles, Navistar International in Chicago, and Cooper Industries Inc. in Houston have each recorded between $3.2 and $3.5 billion in sales for 1987. Henry Singleton, founder and chairman of the board of Teledyne, is paid $850,000 (including fees and bonuses); Robert Cizik, president and chairman of Cooper Industries, $800,000, and James C. Cotting, chairman and CEO of Navistar, $600,000. And each of these companies has fewer employees than the Los Angeles School District.

Indeed, based on budgetary and personnel responsibilities, extent of public scrutiny, and risk of failure, Britton is probably underpaid.

Clearly, administrators’ salaries are warranted. Could more money be available for teachers if some administrators were simply eliminated? It is difficult to fire civil servants; often their assignments are simply shifted when their ineffectiveness in a particular job is identified.

In a sense, any government bureaucracy is over-managed. However, a school district as large as Los Angeles’ requires some regionalization and duplication of responsibilities. Each region in the Los Angeles system is larger than most school districts in their entirety. In our increasingly regulated and “accountable” society, the number of administrators grows geometrically along with requirements for reports and applications (many of them for city, state and federal agencies having nothing to do with education), as well as new requirements in the areas of textbook acquisition, curriculum standards and much more. Some administrators in the Los Angeles district are superfluous; unfortunately, most are performing mandated functions.

Administrators should earn salaries competitive with those of managers in private industry--and teachers should earn salaries comparable to people in other skilled professions. A restructuring of teachers’ salaries to make them dependent on talents, abilities and performance would result in teachers feeling more fulfilled and satisfied as workers. The teaching profession would gain respect from the public, and college students would once again be attracted to the most noble profession.