Kentucky teachers’ pay compared to the state’s other college graduates – Part 1
Thanks to information in the Post secondary Feedback Reports from the Kentucky Center for Education and Workforce Statistics (KCEWS), Kentuckians have access to some interesting salary data for the state’s college graduates.
The following table extracts data from several Postsecondary Feedback Reports issued in 2014 that show how much Kentucky bachelors’ and graduate degree winners in 2012 were making on average three years later in 2015.
As you can see, even for some of the state’s more selective college types (research universities like the University of Kentucky), KCEWS shows that – three years after graduation – in 2015 average wages for each type of college listed were still under $30,000 for Bachelors’ Degree holders.
Now, lets compare that to some information in the Kentucky Department of Education’s Certified Salary Schedule for teachers for 2015. This 2015 schedule is no longer available online and has to be requested from the Kentucky Department of Education, by the way.
Wages for All 2012 Bachelors' Degree Grads in Kentucky 3 Years Later
First, consider that new teachers with a bachelors’ degree in teaching normally start at Rank III salary schedule level. So, I checked the 2015 Certified Salary Schedule’s information for Rank III teachers who had 3 years of experience and were being paid at the lowest, Step I rate.
The lowest paying district in 2015 for a Rank III teacher with three years’ experience at the Step I pay level was Elliot County, which listed a wage of $33,248 per year. That’s more than $3,000 above the statewide average for all bachelors’ degree holders from even the most exclusive class of colleges according to the KCEWS data in the table above.
Next, using data I computed from Kentucky School Report Card information on the number of teachers with bachelors’ degrees in each school district in 2015, I computed a weighted average for the Rank III, Year 3, Step I salary across all the school districts in the state, which turned out to be $38,159.
So, as of 2015, relatively new Kentucky teachers with bachelors’ degrees and three years on the job on average made about $8,800 a year more than the entire group of bachelors’ degree holders in all disciplines made three years after graduating from even Kentucky’s most demanding research institutions. That is a pretty healthy difference.
Thus, it looks like salaries for Kentucky’s new teachers compare really, really well to what other Kentucky bachelors’ degree holders are generally able to earn. And, I suspect a lot of those other degree holders are not getting anything nearly as generous with their retirement packages and health care coverage, as well.
Also to be considered, the normal teacher work year includes just 185 working days. For most workers, allowing for a five-day work week and a two-week vacation, the work year is somewhere around 250 days.
Technical Notes
Here is how I developed the statewide weighted average salary for Kentucky’s Rank III, Year 3 teachers.
I first sorted the 2015 Certified Salary Schedule from the Kentucky Department of Education to remove all information other than each district’s salary for Rank III, Year 3, Step I teachers.
To weight those individual districts’ salaries for the overall average, I needed the number of bachelor degree teachers in each district. That information was developed from available data in the Kentucky School Report Cards Excel spreadsheet for LEARNING_ENVIRONMENT, STUDENTS/TEACHERS under the Student-Teacher Summary tab. This tab lists the total number of full time equivalent teachers in each district and the percentage of those teachers that have bachelors degrees. Applying that percentage to the total number of teachers yielded the number of bachelors’ degree teachers in each district.
I then computed the overall weighted average salary with the bachelor teacher counts and each district’s salary for Rank III, Year 3, Step I teachers.
By the way, there is a moderate correlation (0.46) between the number of bachelors’ degree teachers in each district and the Rank III, Year 3 salaries. In other words, larger districts tend to pay more.
Along those lines, the top salary and teacher counts for 2015 are found in Jefferson and Fayette Counties, for example. Top paying Jefferson County gave Rank III, Year 3, Step I teachers a $42,745 salary, for example.
The source of the KCEWS statewide average data in the table was from Page 2 in these three Postsecondary Feedback Reports: