$22,495
The amount spent annually by the Asbury Park district in New Jersey, one of the Garden State’s worst-performing traditional school systems (there are suburban districts that are spending even more and not doing that much better). As pointed out by NJ Left Behind, the state could voucherize its share of funding to the district and send Asbury Park’s 1,900 remaining students to better schools.
$338,000
Amount earned in base salary by Philadelphia schools boss Arlene Ackerman, who hasn’t exactly turned around the City of Brotherly Love’s dropout factories. By the way, she makes double the salary of Pennsylvania’s governor.
$3,000
The bonus a New York City teacher could have gotten under the city’s now-discontinued performance pay experiment for meeting targets for improving student achievement. For a 20-year veteran with all the qualifications under the pay scale, that’s just 3 percent of their annual salary of $100,049.
$100,005
Average total compensation for a Milwaukee public school teacher, one of the nation’s worst-performing school systems. By the way: None of those dollars are earned immediately by young, high-quality teachers who are subjected to layoffs thanks to last hired-first fired rules. They have to wait 15 years or more to earn the full benefits. And they end up making the same as colleagues who shouldn’t even be near a chalkboard.
