With teachers out this week, I ran some numbers

We all feel underpaid, and somehow our employers all feel we’re overpaid. So, who’s right? Well, if we keep working for the amount they’re paying us, and our boss keeps paying that amount instead of letting us go, then it’s pretty safe to say that’s the market amount for our circumstance.

We are programmed from childhood to reflexively say teachers are underpaid. The sun comes up in the east and teachers are underpaid. So how is it that, for the most part, there is a teacher in every classroom? Teacher shortages do happen, we’re likely in one now, so districts must pay more to fill those classrooms. But in one way — whenever there are enough teachers to fill classrooms — we can say they are being paid enough.

The real question is, given their important role and the value they provide, should they be paid even more? Fact is, we don’t know because there’s no truly open market for teachers.

Teachers are insultingly compensated like factory workers. They are mostly paid via a union “salary schedule,” meaning they get pay raises based on only two factors: the number of college degrees and certificates they earn, and how many years they’ve been on the job.

That makes a pretty lousy incentive structure: you keep putting in your years (which explains those few bitter old teachers who obviously hate their jobs and your kids), and you keep taking classes (which is why everyone in education at some point demands to be called “doctor” even though they can’t remove your appendix). But what of their comparative individual value?

Imagine what our tech industry would be like if computer programmers were paid that way. As true professionals, programmers are able to negotiate their own contracts, get judged on the quality of their work, and demand more pay under threat of going to a different, better paying employer. They are professionals because they’re not paid the same!

Teachers unions call their members “professionals,” yet will never give teachers the respect to have them negotiate for their own pay as free agents.

We keep hearing Colorado is 49th in the country for educational spending. That lie is repeated so often it becomes legend. Funding for Colorado schools are split between the local school district and the state. So, if you compare only the state funding part to states that have no local match, yep, ours looks low.

But when you look at total funding, which can be counted in different ways, the picture doesn’t look so dire. Here’s how Colorado’s per-pupil spending ranks, as of 2015, as measured by groups not part of Colorado educratic establishment:

•National Center for Education Statistics: 39th

•National Education Association: 22nd

•Education Week: 37th

•Education Law Center, Rutgers University: 34th

According to the Colorado Department of Education, the average salary for teachers here is $52,728. But that’s only one piece of the compensation.

The school year is about 180 days, or 36 weeks. So, the pay is $1,465 for every week a teacher is teaching. Vacation time? Well, 52 weeks in a year, minus 36 weeks in the classroom, that’s 16 weeks off, roughly 4 months! Compare that to someone who only gets 2 weeks off but still gets paid $1,465 a week when working, that’s the equivalent of $73,233.

And let’s count the present-cost value of their retirement benefits. Studies suggest that to buy a private retirement plan, with current dollars up front like a 401k, that guarantees the same benefit as PERA does, you’d have to pay teachers 25 percent more. Not bad for a system where you can retire at 58.

If we still think teachers deserve more, where should the money come from? Might I humbly suggest we look at the growing administrative costs? Let’s think of it this way. According to Colorado Department of Education data from 2015-16, we spend roughly $12,700 per student. So, in a classroom of 24 kids at $12,700 each, that comes to $304,800 to educate that class.

Silly question here but, if the teacher’s salary is say $52,000, what’s going on with the remaining quarter of a million dollars? With administrative staff in most district growing twice as fast as the teaching staff, it’s not a surprise.

But Friday’s mass protests at the capitol wouldn’t have the same ring if all the signs read, “Pay us teachers more, cut administrative staff!”

Jon Caldara, a Denver Post columnist, is president of the Independence Institute, a libertarian-conservative think tank in Denver.