New report: Teachers are overpaid

You may have heard that teachers, who spend seven hours a day with our community’s children and many more hours working on their behalf, are underpaid. But two prominent conservative think tanks have issued a new report saying teachers are actually way overpaid.
The American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation argue that when you consider benefits and job security, teachers are paid 52 percent more than fair market levels. That’s “$120 billion overcharged to taxpayers each year,” the report says. The report argues that comparing teachers to people with similar educational credentials is invalid because “teacher skills generally lag behind those of other workers with similar ‘paper’ qualifications.”
“Teacher compensation could therefore be reduced with only minor effects on recruitment and retention,” the authors say.
We know the best teachers are motivated more by personal and professional fulfillment than by big paychecks, but this is ridiculous.
UPDATE: The N.C. Association of Educators offers this context: Its Fund Schools First report released in March notes that North Carolina has dropped from 25th to 45th in the nation for average teacher salaries since the 2008-09 school year. In fact, North Carolina is at its lowest ranking in 64 years, since data first began being collected.
What do you think?

-- Taylor Batten