Steve Mitrovich has published an article which, among other things, touches on how the District’s salary schedule stacks up against other San Mateo County districts.
I thought it might be interesting to explore that idea a little further, so I did an analysis comparing the District schedule to all the other elementary districts in California which use the same “philosophy” for compensating teachers (it turns out almost all of them — 411 out of 422 — do).
The basic idea behind the analysis is simple: if a district used the same salary metrics as San Carlos, would that increase or decrease the salaries of their teachers? Here’s what I found (click on the chart for a bigger version):
Statewide, switching to San Carlos’ metrics would make things better for teachers in other districts in over 79% of the salary schedule. Within San Mateo County the switch would be beneficial 53% of the time.
The number is lower locally because there are so many very wealthy “basic aid” districts here. If you only look at districts dependent on State funds — like our own — than 89% of the salary schedule entries in San Mateo County are inferior to what San Carlos offers.
Another way to compare salary schedules is to look at what fraction of teachers would be better off under the San Carlos schedule. This can be, and is, different from just comparing the schedules themselves because it depends on where in the schedule actual teachers place.
Think of it this way: if every teacher in every district in the State placed in the 21% of the schedules that are worse than San Carlos’, every single teacher would be worse off shifting to our schedule. That particular case is very unlikely, but it’s still worth looking at where actual teachers place.
Here’s what I found when I analyzed that question:
The same pattern holds, but not quite as prominently.
The point about the difference between comparing schedules and where teachers fall among schedules may be clearer if you look at the following chart, which lays out the two comparisons side by side (click for a larger image):
What does all this mean? I think it says the District does a reasonable job of trying to pay teachers as well as it can. There are places where teachers would earn a higher salary, based on their experience and qualifications, but there aren’t a lot of them.
By the way, because the cost of living varies widely within California, it’s certainly possible that teachers in some parts of the State are better off, financially, than their counterparts in San Carlos. Unfortunately, for districts dependent on State aid like our own, the State funding formula ignores the fact that living on the Peninsula is a lot more expensive than, say, living in most of the Central Valley.