The Fordham Foundation, despite their pro corporate education agenda can often be depended upon to at least present their case in a fair and honest manner. That is until their animosity towards education unions is put on display, as was the case with their support of SB5. But, few posts on their website have lost their bearings quite as much as a post titled "Unionized teacher salaries", by Aaron Churchill.
In this piece, the author seeks to compare the salaries of union teachers in 2 Springfield City elementary schools to a charter school in the same city. Cherry picking 3 schools from Ohio's thousands is a suspect endeavor to begin with, but even with that, the results go awry quite quickly.
First let's take a look at the 3 schools presented to us
| Type | Charter | District | District |
| Name | Springfield Academy of Excellence | Fulton Elem. | Perrin Woods Elem. |
| % White | 16.5 | 40.8 | 26 |
| % Black | 61 | 43.3 | 53.1 |
| % Hispanic | 10.9 | 8.2 | 2.7 |
| Rating | Academic Watch | Academic Watch | Academic Watch |
| PI | 77.9 | 79.5 | 76.8 |
Pretty similar: SAE, Fulton, and Perrin Woods all have a majority Black and Hispanic students in their school. (These represent 3 of the 4 elementary schools in Springfield that have a majority minority population.) In addition, table 1 indicates that they had nearly indistinguishable academic results for the 2011-12 school year. All received an “Academic Watch” rating from the state and they all had performance index scores—a weighted proficiency rate—between 77 and 80 (the state goal is 100).
So, that's the rationale for selecting these schools. We're perplexed why racial demographics were the primary matching criteria chosen, especially when they aren't even that similar at all. We're certain it is not racism, as what difference does the racial makeup of the schools matter? So is the author using racial demographics as a proxy for poverty in this analysis?
If one were to look directly at the poverty levels of these 3 schools (which is in the ODE spreadsheet just one more column to the right!), these cherry picked schools suddenly don't seem similar at all. Let's add that data point in.
| Type | Charter | District | District |
| Name | Springfield Academy of Excellence | Fulton Elem. | Perrin Woods Elem. |
| % White | 16.5 | 40.8 | 26 |
| % Black | 61 | 43.3 | 53.1 |
| % Hispanic | 10.9 | 8.2 | 2.7 |
| Rating | Academic Watch | Academic Watch | Academic Watch |
| PI | 77.9 | 79.5 | 76.8 |
| Percent Economically Disadvantaged | 85.1 | 95.4 | 91.7 |
As you can see, the traditional schools have up to 10% more poverty than the charter school they are being compared to. Nothing highlights the all too common situation of charter school selection leading to traditional schools being left with more disadvantaged students than this. But the dissimilarities don't end there. Let's add another important indicator into the mix that the author omitted - students with disabilities
| Type | Charter | District | District |
| Name | Springfield Academy of Excellence | Fulton Elem. | Perrin Woods Elem. |
| % White | 16.5 | 40.8 | 26 |
| % Black | 61 | 43.3 | 53.1 |
| % Hispanic | 10.9 | 8.2 | 2.7 |
| Rating | Academic Watch | Academic Watch | Academic Watch |
| PI | 77.9 | 79.5 | 76.8 |
| Percent Economically Disadvantaged | 85.1 | 95.4 | 91.7 |
| Percent Student with Disabilities | 7.1 | 20.6 | 17.5 |
Clearly then, the traditional schools have far larger populations of students with disabilities. Why would anyone be surprised that teachers in schools with higher levels of poverty, and disabilities be more seriously challenged?
The problems with the Fordham piece goes even deeper, and becomes more troubling than simply looking at very bad analysis. Fordham must of intentionally cherry picked schools to use for their performance/salary comparison. Fulton and Perrin Woods are not the only elementary schools in Springfield City.
Why did they not use Lagonda Elementary School, for example, in their analysis? When we add that schools data in, the answer becomes obvious
| Type | Charter | District | District | District |
| Name | Springfield Academy of Excellence | Fulton Elem. | Perrin Woods Elem. | Lagonda Elem. |
| % White | 16.5 | 40.8 | 26 | 67.3 |
| % Black | 61 | 43.3 | 53.1 | 14.9 |
| % Hispanic | 10.9 | 8.2 | 2.7 | 4.7 |
| Rating | Academic Watch | Academic Watch | Academic Watch | Excellent |
| PI | 77.9 | 79.5 | 76.8 | 90.4 |
| Percent Economically Disadvantaged | 85.1 | 95.4 | 91.7 | 87.4 |
| Percent Student with Disabilities | 7.1 | 20.6 | 17.5 | 11.4 |
A school with a similar poverty and disability levels as the charter school selected, but it is obvious why no attention was drawn to Lagona Elementary school - that school is rated excellent. It's hard to argue that teachers are somehow overpaid when your comparison falls down on the criteria of quality and true meaningful demographics.
Before we move away from school demographics, we do want to chastise the author for this nasty, and incorrect comment
"Purportedly". If the piece he wrote had been dripping in less bile and contempt for unionized educators, he might have noticed that both these traditional schools he erroneously choose to use for his analysis, met their value add - that is - the teachers in these schools didn't "purportedly" educate their students, they simply did.
Mr Churchill owes an apology to these hard working teachers for suggesting they are not educating their students adequately.
But let's address the salary comparisons directly.
The author points out that the traditional school teachers in these 2 elementary schools earn more than their charter school counterparts (which even he characterizes as "pitifully low"). This is true, it's one of the reasons why corporate education reformers want to attack unionized teaching forces, they want to maximize their own profits by underpaying teachers for their work. If quality were a genuine concern surely the argument would be to increase teacher pay in disadvantaged schools in order to attract high quality educators. You will never see a corporate education reformer make this argument.
That aside, Mr Churchill once again fails to compare apples to apples. While teachers in all 3 schools he selected have bachelors degrees, only 10.2% of teachers in the charter school have a masters, whereas 33.3% in Fulton and 42.3% in Perrin Woods have advance masters degrees. Is Mr. Churchill arguing that employees with more advanced educations should not receive higher pay? This flies in the face of all economic theory.
Indeed, Mr. Churchill goes even further
You know who else is paid more than their community median - Fordham employees who make over $90,000 a year for part time work, but that aside, are we being told that the median education in the Springfield community is a masters degree? Or is Mr Churchill arguing that everyone should be paid the same in a community regardless of education, experience and the job they are performing? It's a very strange economic argument being made.
We should also consider, as Mr. Churchill tries to pit the Springfield city community against its teachers, that in just 2011, voters of the city overwhelmingly supported their school levy with 67.1% of the vote. That doesn't sound like a community dissatisfied with their teachers or their pay. Quite the contrary.
But finally, what this Fordham piece does demonstrate, beyond the obvious ideological agenda, is a total lack of understanding of how salaries are negotiated. They are not negotiated at the school level, between teachers and the principal, instead they are negotiated at the district level with the democratically elected board. So one should look at the district performance as a whole to make serious judgments as to the quality of education being delivered by Springfield City Schools and its teachers.
Springfield City Schools, despite its many demographic challenges is rated Effective.