Tradeoff Teacher Wages vs Layoffs to Meet Budgets

School districts faced with large budget gaps could avoid some or all teacher layoffs by rolling back salaries. While this option may not work for all districts, a new analysis shows that district officials--and teachers unions--could both serve students and teachers by trimming classroom pay.

Marguerite Roza based her analysis on the fact that 93 percent of school districts in the U.S. negotiate and structure teacher-pay according to a fixed salary schedule, consisting of annual as well as step increases. Step increases average 3.16 percent a year. The annual increase for the salary schedules she calculated at the average Consumer Price Index (CPI) for the 1997--2007 period at 2.87 percent. The total for the two, at 6.03 percent, may not make sense this year, says Roza.

In a simple chart, she provides five possible decision-options showing how, if salaries are rolled back, fewer teachers get laid off and class sizes increase by fewer students.

In a fifth option, Roza indicates no layoffs would be needed and class sizes would not increase were the district to achieve the 5 percent cut in teaching costs by rolling back salaries 8.16 percent—a move that still would allow the teachers to get their annual salary step increase.


Full report.

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