I will protect your pensions. Nothing about your pension is going to change when I am governor. - Chris Christie, "An Open Letter to the Teachers of NJ" October, 2009

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Corporate "Reformers" Get Corporate Salaries

I asked earlier today what the salaries were for the corporate "reformers" - you know, the ones who want to radically change teacher compensation systems.

In the comments, Ken pointed me toward guidestar.org. It's a site where you can get IRS forms from a wide variety of non-profits (you have to remember folks: I'm just an amateur, and I'm learning as I go. So any time any of you can send me in the right direction, I really appreciate it - thanks, Ken!).

Part of IRS reporting includes compensation for top officers. But you can only get this data if the organization has been around long enough to have filed a 990. Michelle Rhee's Students First and Derrell Bradford's B4K haven't had to file yet, so we don't know what they make. However...

The average yearly teacher salary is around $55,000. So, if we use my previous list, we can figure out how much a corporate "reformer" makes relative to the average teacher:

Joel Klein's pulling down at least $2 million - probably a lot more.

Gosh, I wonder why none of these people are in the classroom today?

ADDING: Hey, New Jersey teachers: remember when Chris Christie told you if you really cared about the kids you'd take a pay freeze? Because you weren't part of the "shared sacrifice"? But we couldn't afford to keep the millionaires tax?

Look up at my chart again, and remember he said that when 2013 rolls around.

2 comments:

Ken Houghton said...

For comparisons's sake, the six Elementary School Principals in my area (SOMSD, Essex County) made a total of $773,579--and that's for Five Masters's Degrees, one Doctorate, and an average of 17 2/3 years of experience (min 9, max 31).

No one made more than $135,300—about 3/7ths of what Barth makes.

And that's working the Admin level, which is much better paid.

Duke said...

Ken, add to that the superintendent cap here in NJ, and you've got to wonder why anyone with managerial skills would ever want to work in education.

Well, I actually do know why - they love the job and consider it important. Too bad their salaries don't reflect that.