More than a decade and a half of work on the topic has shown there has been a long-trending erosion of teacher wages and compensation relative to other college graduates. Simply put, teachers are paid less (in wages and compensation) than other college-educated workers with similar experience and other characteristics, and this financial penalty…

Over the past few years, as cash-strapped states and school districts have faced tough budget decisions, spending on teacher compensation has come under the microscope. The underlying question is whether, when you take everything into account, today's teachers are fairly paid, underpaid, or overpaid. In this forum, two pairs of respected…

Wage analyses of several government surveys suggest that substantial, broad-based reductions in real wages occurred in the final years of the 1980s recovery. (Data sources are the hourly compensation data from the Employment Cost Index series and wage data from the Current Population Survey.) The wages of those who lost the most in the 1980s (high…