Last week Emmy highlighted the mismatch between Ohio's declining student enrollment (a near seven percent reduction since 2000) and growing teacher corps (up by almost 18 percent). This expanding labor pool is largely responsible for driving up the cost of education, as teachers' salaries and pensions are by far K-12 education's priciest expenditure.
Also incredibly costly is the fact that 62 percent of Ohio teachers have at least a master's degree, which is 18 percentage points higher than the US average and higher than all of the Buckeye State's neighbors. (Kentucky has a high percentage of teachers with ?specialist? degrees, which accounts for the tall red bar in the chart below. )
In Ohio's Big 8 cities, the number of teachers receiving at least a master's degree continues to grow. In Cincinnati, that number has grown by almost 13 percent in just five years; in Dayton, by a whopping 20 percent; all other cities except Akron (which remains the same at 68 percent) have also seen a rise in the number of master's credentialed teachers. In Dayton, the spike in the percentage of teachers with master's didn't result from more teachers earning their degrees or credentialed teachers joining the district. Rather, the increase came from district layoffs in the 2005-06 school year, followed immediately by a failed levy the next year that led to further cuts. Unfortunately, this bout of layoffs axed the newest teachers and protected credentialed teachers (who are costlier but not necessarily more effective in the classroom), a reality that is being repeated in 2010 and which threatens to push younger, talented teachers out of the profession.
The growing number of educators seeking that piece of paper is no big surprise, given the current financial incentives in place and the value we place on things like paperwork and credentials in the profession.? Even prior to NCLB's push for ?highly qualified? teachers (higher degrees can count toward proving ?highly qualified? status in many states) ?Ohio passed legislation in the 1990s that required teachers to get a master's degree by their fifth year of teaching. The master's pay bump is worth several thousands of dollars to teachers, depending on their years of experience and what their contract stipulates. For example, for a teacher in Columbus City Schools with three years of experience, a master's is worth $4200; for one with 10 years of experience, $5600. In Cleveland, those figures are $4200 and $9600, respectively.
For teachers, putting in the extra work required to attain a master's degree is certainly worth the opportunity cost, especially as many districts put aside a special pot of money to help teachers pay for continuing education.
But for the state of Ohio, it's not really much of a bargain. The cost effectiveness of incentivizing master's degrees (especially in subjects other than math and science) is questionable at best, and wasteful at worst. Marguerite Roza, senior scholar at the Center on Reinventing Public Education and school finance guru, argues that states should end the master's pay bump because there is little correlation between a teacher attaining a master's degree and becoming more effective in the classroom. Despite no evidence that master's degrees improve student performance (except in some cases, in math and science), states and districts continue to dole out for it.
A July 2009 analysis by Roza and her colleague Raegen Miller estimates that the master's pay bump cost Ohio $460 million a year, or 2.7 percent of total expenditures on education in Ohio.? As Ohio faces a crushing budget deficit of $8 billion as it heads into the biennium, it's time for lawmakers and leaders to reevaluate the cost-effectiveness of the automatic master's pay bump. If there was ever a time to rethink how we do business, it's now. Spending should be concentrated on that which makes an impact on student achievement.
- by Jamie Davies O'Leary, Eric Ulas
