An innovative study just released by the National Bureau of Economic Research confirms many of these insights. Andrew Johnson, an economist at the University of California-Merced, presented a series of compensation offers to teachers in a large school district in Texas. The offers varied in salary, benefits, and working conditions. By receiving and assessing teacher responses, the study allowed Johnson to estimate dollar values for alternative approaches.
One finding particularly stood out to me: while the participating teachers did, all other things being equal, prefer to teach smaller classes instead of larger ones, the preference wasn’t all that strong. “The cost of reducing class size is seven times greater than teachers’ willingness-to-pay,” Johnson wrote. Similarly, the average value teachers placed on teacher assistance was less than the cost of hiring a teacher assistant at minimum wage. On the other hand, the respondents placed a high value on working for a “supportive” principal who backs them up when disciplining unruly students.
Please read the Carolina Journal article here.
