Legislators want teachers to make as much as coaches

By PEGGY FIKAC / Associated Press

AUSTIN - Legislative leaders say they'd like to see teachers make as much money as coaches, but that decision ultimately is up to local school districts.

"If the local school district chooses to pay their high school football coach more than they pay their teachers, that's part of local control," said House Public Education Committee Chairman Paul Sadler, D-Henderson.

"If the local community allows that to happen, then the taxpayers are getting what they want - in theory at least," he said. "I personally have questioned the practice for a long time. Not that I think coaches are overpaid, but rather that teachers are underpaid."

An Associated Press analysis of 1995-96 records for 4A and 5A schools found a large gap between the salaries of teachers and coaches. Coaches earn $54,000 on average; teachers typically make between $31,000 and $32,000.

Sadler and others noted that the 1995 education law raised the minimum salary scale for teachers and tied it to the state expenditure per student. The price tag for the first two years was about $292 million.

While a good step, Sadler said, "It will not increase enough to catch up with the difference between coaches' salaries and teachers' salaries. Although I wish that would happen, it won't."

Gov. George W. Bush said large salary discrepancies may exist but "by and large, funding is fair."

"Just from a general look, a lot of times the disparity in salary had to do with hours worked and the amount of miles logged in travel," he said.

Bush said he wouldn't promise an additional pay raise for teachers in the coming legislative session because he couldn't guarantee it would pass.

"I think it's going to be hard to ever pay a really good teacher what he or she is worth," he said. "You can't pay for somebody's heart, or as much soul as they put into the classroom."

Richard Kouri, president of the Texas State Teachers Association, said educators were encouraged by the 1995 changes in teacher salary.

But that is likely to be enough to meet teachers' goal of raising the average Texas teacher salary to the national level, Kouri said. In 1995-96, the average U.S. teacher salary was $37,846, while the Texas average was $32,000.

At least one powerful lawmaker, however, discounts that goal.

New Senate Education Committee Chairman Teel Bivins, R-Amarillo, called the discrepancy between teachers' and coaches' salaries "troubling." But he said it's "wrongheaded" to chase the national average.

"First of all, you never get there when you chase an average. And secondly, the cost of doing business, the cost of living in Texas is much less" than a number of other states, he said.

Some education experts suggested that if football coaches are paid for winning, teachers should be paid for productivity as well.

Tom Luce, a Dallas lawyer who was chief of staff of the Select Committee on Public Education in the mid-1980s, points out that not every doctor or lawyer earns the same wage. He says the same should be true for teachers.

"I'm all for paying for performance," he said. "That's what we do on the football side, but we don't do it on the academic side."

George Scott is president of the Houston-area Tax Research Association, a nonprofit watchdog group that evaluates educational issues and their impact on property taxes. He also advocates paying teachers for producing excellent students, but says the concept "generally gets unions and administration off the wall."

Administrators would rather use a uniform salary schedule and avoid making hard management decisions, he said.

"When you look at giving a 6 or 7 percent raise, on an across-the-board basis, you're talking about a lot of money. And that 6 or 7 percent, on a scale, is going to the good, the bad and the ugly," he said.

"The system we have hasn't really figured out how to give it to just the productive. This is the area where you're going to see fairly profound and dramatic changes in public education."

Kouri objects to incentive pay for teachers because no system exists to accurately measure productivity.

"How do you adequately adjust for the demographic differences in an English class in (the Dallas area's affluent) Highland Park versus an English class in an inner-city school district in Houston, Texas?"

Bivins said he wants to research Texas teacher compensation and give new Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bill Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant and former Education chairman, "time to get his feet on the ground and get our arms around where we are financially in the state."

"I need to be more of an advocate for teacher salaries in my position today than I have been as just a member of the Education Committee," Bivins said, "but I can't forget about all of the other demands on state revenue."