If I offered you $100,000 a year for the rest of your life to retire from your current job, would you take me up on the offer? What if I said you could have the money and also get a different job if you wanted? If you would answer yes to these questions, you have gone a long way toward understanding why turnover is high among public school superintendents. We financially incentivize them to “retire.”

Take a look at the recent article from Springfield News-Leader’s Claudette Riley, in which she discussed the problem of superintendent turnover. Nearly every person cited in the report was a superintendent who has retired and is working another job. Doug Hayter retired as superintendent of Branson Public Schools; he now draws his retirement benefit and serves as the executive director of the Missouri Association of School Administrators (MASA). Kelly Hinshaw and John Jungman, also quoted in the report, are retired administrators who now work for MASA.

Given the rules of our current state pension system, it makes financial sense to do just as these folks have done. Consider some of the other retiring superintendents listed in Riley’s report. Shawn Randles is retiring from the Logan-Rogersville School District. After a 31-year career, he’s eligible to draw 75 percent of his final average salary of $152,002 for the rest of his life. Depending on the payout he chooses, this could be as much as $114,000 a year. According to Riley, Randles “plans to start a second career in an education-related field.”

Chris Ford, Fordland’s “retiring” superintendent is in a similar position. He’s eligible to draw $108,000 a year for the rest of his life while continuing to work. He has taken a position at Evangel University.

We are told turnover among superintendents is high because the job is stressful. It is curious then that many retire and take up similar positions in other states. Take Crane’s retiring superintendent, Chris Johnson, who has accepted the superintendent post in Prairie View, Kansas.

Stress may be a factor, but the truth is that superintendent turnover is high because our state’s pension system makes it financially beneficial for our veteran administrators to leave. They can earn more by retiring than they could if they kept working.

As Riley’s piece explained, superintendents are eligible to retire after 30 years of service in the profession or after their years of service plus their age equal 80. This means that someone who starts teaching right out of college could be eligible for retirement by their mid-50s. These individuals can then draw their pension and take on new roles, as long as those roles are not covered by Missouri’s Public School Retirement System.

We should applaud efforts to mentor and train superintendents, but if we truly want to reduce turnover the solution is clear—we must change our retirement system. This does not have to mean abandoning the current defined-benefit pension system, though offering a defined-contribution option is something that should be considered. The solution could be as simple as allowing superintendents to draw early disbursements from their pension fund while retaining their current jobs. This would diminish the financial pull to retire and take up a new job in another state or outside of PSRS.

As long as we continue to make it financially lucrative to retire, we will continue to see our best educational administrators retire shortly after they hit year 30.

The post To Reduce Superintendent Turnover, Change the Pension System appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

I find that this burying-your-head-in-the-sand approach often happens in public institutions, such as universities and public schools. The interesting thing is that when you decide to speak up you often find there are others who agree with you. They were just keeping their head down like you.

Not long ago, I had coffee with a retired public school superintendent. We are told by the press that all the education associations are completely against open enrollment, where students are allowed to transfer to other public school districts. But the superintendent told me that he had no problem with open enrollment. In fact, he said a lot of superintendents were fine with it. (These may have been superintendents in districts that would gain students, but that is beside the point.) Yet, superintendents who support open enrollment appear to be keeping their heads down.

I can understand why. It takes a lot of nerve to speak out against your colleagues. When I was a public school teacher and I voiced support for school choice policies, I got called to the superintendent’s office. While she framed it as just a discussion, it was clearly an attempt to intimidate me into keeping my opinions to myself.

Even now when I write in favor of school choice, I often get pushback from public school educators. Their messages effectively say, “How could you?”

The fact is a lot of teachers support school choice. They just won’t say it publicly. Consider this: teachers unions regularly push for policies that will allow teachers to enroll their children in the school they teach in, even if the teacher doesn’t live in the district. This is school choice. Teachers are supportive of other forms of school choice as well. In a 2022 poll of 1,000 K-12 teachers (public and private), 77% of those polled were supportive of education savings accounts. A majority of teachers in the poll were supportive of open enrollment and charter schools.

If you are a teacher and you support school choice policies, you are not alone.  You don’t have to hide your views. Let that school choice flag fly.

The post Yes, Even Teachers Like School Choice appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Sixteen districts responded with contracts showing superintendent salaries ranging from $125,000 to $294,000 per year. We also looked at an evaluation of those same school districts from the Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis (CEPA), which measured the performance of 3rd-grade students in 2009 and then, five years later in 2014, measured the performance of the students in 8th-grade. The object of the CEPA study was to determine if students experienced a full five years of academic growth in five calendar years.

The table below shows superintendent salaries from 2011 to 2014 and student performance growth from 2009 to 2014 for each school district that responded to our sunshine request.

The average academic growth between 3rd grade and 8th grade in these 16 districts is 4.7 years. Only three districts had five or more years of growth over the five-year period studied—Fort Zumwalt, Parkway, and Wentzville.

Because the time covered in the Stanford study (2009–2014) doesn’t align exactly with the superintendent salary information (which only goes back to 2011), we can’t make a perfect comparison of the salaries against performance. But based on the four years for which we have both sets of data, it’s difficult to see a direct connection between the two. Of the three districts with more than five years of growth in the table above, only Parkway paid its superintendent above the average rate from 2011 to 2014.

In fact, evidence of any connection between superintendents and student performance is hard to come by. One Brookings Institute study looked at the effect of superintendent turnover on student performance in North Carolina and Florida schools. It failed to find a significant connection. Nor did the study find a relationship between student performance and superintendent longevity.

Such studies make it appropriate to question why superintendent salaries are so high. There are certainly plenty of reasons why people think they should be high. Superintendents are like the CEOs of the school district. They oversee the management and budget of all the schools in the district. Perhaps most importantly, they hire principals and other administrators in the district, who in turn hire the teachers.

But with little evidence that superintendents are making a significant difference in student performance, it’s reasonable to ask why districts are paying them so much. The people in the school hierarchy who have the most effect on student achievement are teachers—and at an average salary of around $53,000, they earn around one-fourth of what superintendents earn. That’s not even considering the school pension system, which definitely favors the higher paid. All of which takes us back to a question that James Shuls raised in an April blog post: Is this really where we want to spend our money?

The post On Superintendents and Their Districts appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

What, that’s not the norm? Well, it is exactly what the “retiring” Pattonville superintendent will be doing soon.

The Kansas City Business Journal is reporting that the longtime superintendent will be retiring from Pattonville this year and taking up the superintendent position in the Shawnee Mission School District in Kansas. This move will allow him to retire from the pension system in Missouri and begin drawing his guaranteed benefit while also earning a salary in his new district, because the two school districts are in different pension systems.

According to the St. Louis Business Journal, the Pattonville superintendent earned $267,232 in 2016–17. In Missouri’s Public School Retirement System, members can earn 75% of their final average salary (defined as their three highest consecutive years). This would easily put his annual retirement benefit over $200,000, because the listed salary does not include other benefits, such as medical, which are also included in the final average salary.

There are three important things to take away from this.

First, we have to ask if it is wise to have a system that pushes effective leaders out at a relatively early age. This superintendent, who might likely work for another decade or more in Kansas, will begin drawing his retirement immediately and will draw it for the rest of his life. Indeed, there is a tremendous incentive for individuals to retire at this point in their career.

This leads us to our second point, pushing out effective educators  may not be an effective strategy if we want to improve the quality of education. This superintendent will take his services elsewhere, but many terrific teachers, principals, and superintendents are pushed out of education all together.

Finally, when people ask why the pension system is underfunded, this should be one of the prime examples you give them. The problem is that individuals like this superintendent often do not contribute enough to the system to cover their pension benefits. He is a big time pension winner, who will be receiving much more in benefits than he contributed to the system.

Don’t get me wrong: I applaud the superintendent’s decision. It’s a smart one, and we should all be so lucky. The problem is that we can’t all be so lucky. Lavish benefits like this must be paid for by someone. As I have shown before, they are paid by teachers who leave money in the system, by low-paid teachers in other districts, and ultimately by taxpayers.

Superintendents and others like Pattonville’s are not simply getting what they put into the system; they are getting much more. Let me ask you which system seems fair: this one, or a system in which retirees receive benefits that are in line with their contributions? If you ask me, the answer seems obvious. 

The post A $200,000 Retirement Benefit and a $250,000 Salary? Deal! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

There is a lesson to learn here. It is one that people across the country have found when their great superintendent leaves for greener pastures.  We cannot have school systems that are completely dependent on a one-in-a-million talent at the helm in order to succeed.  There is only one Tiffany Anderson.  Missouri has 520 school districts.

One of the main reasons that I advocate for a decentralized schooling system is that it is more resilient to the shocks that occur in everyday life. People move. People’s life priorities change.  People die. If, for example, a school district is run by a collection of independent charter school operators and one amazing principal leaves, there is a limit to the disruption in the equilibrium of the system. But if power is centralized and the person at the top leaves, the whole system is affected.

Tiffany Anderson is proof that there are great leaders out there who can turn around struggling organizations. The problem is that there just aren’t enough of them.  Our response should not be to bemoan this fact, just like it doesn’t make sense to get upset at blizzards or floods or thunderstorms.  We should try and build systems that can handle the snow, the rain, and the wind.

We will have to see if the Jennings district is resilient enough to absorb the loss. For its kids’ sake I hope it is. But if it isn’t, we’ve got to start moving toward a better way.

The post Jennings Superintendent’s Departure: Lessons for Education Policy appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

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Yesterday, I wrote a piece in which I noted that the Lee’s Summit School District superintendent earned $258,660. Indeed, this was the figure cited in the recent audit of the school district and it was an accurate figure. It is not, however, his current salary. Shortly after we published the post, an astute reader of the blog pointed me to the superintendent’s current contract. This year, he is earning $282,831. Yes, he received a $24,171, or 9.3 percent, raise from last year to this year. Next year, he is due to receive $294,463, and $306,735 the year after that.

One mistake I made in the post was stating that his fringe benefits were in addition to his salary. His new contract states that the salary “includes the value of certain fringe benefits,” such as deferred compensation, family medical insurance, association dues, cell phone, business expenses, and a vehicle allowance. So, for the most part, his benefits are included in his salary total. Still, this is a pretty nice salary. In addition to these perks, he is allowed up to $3,000 additional income to cover fuel expenses. And, he is given 30 vacation days on top of holidays.

Let’s not forget, the superintendent is also a member of the Public School Retirement System (PSRS). That means the school district must provide a 14.5 percent match to his retirement contributions. All told, the compensation package for the superintendent of the Lee’s Summit School District is north of $320,000.

See the full contract here.

Update: Following this post, we received the following tweet from Dr. David McGehee:

@ShowMe As a matter of fact, base salary $218,972 13-14, $227,731 14-15, and $236,840 15-16. Rest reported is in lieu of benefits & expenses

— David McGehee (@DrDavidMcGehee) February 5, 2014

The post Update: Lee’s Summit Superintendent’s Amazing Contract appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

What has shocked people the most about the audit may be the salary and benefit package that the superintendent receives. The report noted:

The district’s superintendent at June 30, 2013, was Dr. David McGehee. His annual compensation was $258,660, which included a deferred compensation allowance of $19,716, family medical insurance of $15,377, and association expenses of $12,000. He was also provided a district vehicle for business and personal use.

Let me be clear. That is $258,660 plus those other benefits. None of this should come as a shock to readers of the Show-Me Daily blog. In 2010, we published a policy study detailing the actual pay of public school superintendents in Missouri and we noted that many receive significant perks.

One of the things we highlighted in that paper was that there seemed to be no correlation between academic performance of students and the compensation of the superintendent. From just a cursory glance, this seems to be the case here. From 2009 to 2013, the percentage of Lee’s Summit students scoring proficient or advanced in math and language arts has remained almost unchanged. Other districts, however, have improved and Lee’s Summit has dropped in the rankings. In 2009, the district was in the top 35 districts in terms of performance on the math and language arts exams. The district since has dropped to 90th and 53rd, respectively.

In approximately the same time frame, the superintendent’s salary has increased dramatically. In 2007, he was paid a salary of $170,000. In the seven years since then, he has received a 52 percent raise. According to data that the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education collects, this makes him the highest-paid superintendent in the state.

The post Mirror Mirror, Who Is The Highest Paid Of Them All? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Read the essay: The Power To Lead: Analysis Of Superintendent Survey Responses Regarding Teacher Tenure

The post The Power To Lead: Analysis Of Superintendent Survey Responses Regarding Teacher Tenure appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

We surveyed 192 Missouri public school superintendents. We thought these individuals would be in the best position to tell the truth about teacher tenure. What did we find?

Seventy-three percent of superintendents in our survey stated that it is somewhat or very difficult to remove a tenured teacher. They note that the process of removing a teacher based on his or her performance in the classroom takes much effort and could cost a significant amount of money. For these reasons, among others, approximately 92 percent of the superintendents stated they would be supportive of some type of tenure reform.

According to the superintendents in our survey, it is time for tenure reform. The question is, what type of reform should it be? Superintendents have thoughts on that as well.

You can read the full paper below.

The post Is It Time For Teacher Tenure Reform? appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Adams earned $221,769 from Wentzville in the 2012-13 school year. He signed with Rockwood for $250,000. This move will not only earn him more money this year, he will reap the rewards for the rest of his life. Wentzville and Rockwood are part of the Public School Retirement System of Missouri (PSRS). This pension system is a defined benefit pension system. That means retirees are guaranteed benefits based on their final average salary.

Final average salary in PSRS is based on the last three years of employment. By working one additional year at a higher salary, Adams boosts his final average from $213,877 to $228,200.

I visited the PSRS benefit estimate calculator and plugged in these figures along with Adams’ years of service and his approximate birthdate (I had to guess). By my calculations, Adams would have received more than $207,000 a year in retirement benefits. By working one extra year, he will earn an extra $15,000 per year for the rest of his life. Over the course of 20 years, this will add up to more than $300,000 in extra retirement benefits. Not bad for an extra year’s work.

I certainly do not blame Adams for his decision. He was doing what was best for him and his family. Moreover, Adams is not alone. The final average salary rule is well known among teachers, principals, and superintendents, making switches like this quite common. The problem is not the individual, but rather a poorly designed system that rewards this type of behavior.

Spiking of final average salary is one factor among many that contributes to the underfunding of defined benefit pension systems. According to a recent policy study by Andrew Biggs for the Show-Me Institute, the total amount of unfunded liabilities for PSRS is more than $5 billion. That is assuming an 8 percent return on current investments — an ambitious assumption. If we assume a more moderate 4 percent rate of return, the unfunded liabilities of PSRS swell to more than $31 billion.

So who pays for Adams and the countless other individuals who spike their pay in their final years? Who pays for the mounting unfunded liabilities? The taxpayers do.

James V. Shuls, Ph.D., is the education policy analyst at the Show-Me Institute, which promotes market solutions for Missouri public policy.

The post Adams Had A Lot Of Reasons To Accept Rockwood Interim Superintendent Position appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Many superintendents in the Saint Louis area make more than $200,000 in salary alone, and receive thousands more in non-salary benefits, such as car payments and annuity payments. For example, Cheatham found that the Clayton superintendent receives $750 per month as a car allowance. This isn’t surprising. In my study of more than 450 Missouri superintendent contracts, I found many odd benefits, including the award of a house.

Most staggering is the finding that the Ferguson-Florrisant Superintendent, Jeffery Spiegel, was awarded health insurance for life for himself and his dependent after he retires at the end of this year. The school board estimates that the benefit will cost more than $200,000, but they have no idea what the cost will be in reality. After all, who knows how long Spiegel will use the benefit?

Cheatham and I both attended the Ferguson-Florrisant School Board meeting on Sept. 8, immediately after the St. Louis Post-Dispatch uncovered Spiegel’s outsized benefit. There was tremendous turnout, to the point that several attendees had to stand. This was unusual; the teachers I sat with said that the board meetings are usually more sparsely attended.

During the public comment session, a number of parents and teachers spoke about the health insurance award. All disagreed with it. In fact, several speakers and attendees noted that the school district had offered retiring teachers continued health insurance for three years after retirement. Some asked why wasn’t that good enough for the superintendent.

I naively thought that in the face of the recession, bad publicity, and disgruntled teachers and parents, perhaps Spiegel would voluntarily relinquish the health insurance for life. Instead, the school board’s president, Les Lenz, spoke at the end of the public comment session to defend the compensation award.

The award is cost effective, Lenz said. Instead of having to find a superintendent quickly, and incur the costs of hiring a consultant to find that new superintendent, the school board could simply award the additional benefit in order to bide more time.

I wonder what the board members were thinking when awarding this potentially incredibly large benefit. After all, the school board will have to conduct a search for a superintendent eventually, regardless of whether the board postpones the search for a year. Does the board think that the search costs will be much lower next year?

As I’ve noted before, this award is especially bad policy because it has an uncertain cost, and because the form of the award obscures its cost from the public. The school board may estimate that the award will cost $200,000, but the cost could be lower, or much greater. Had the board awarded Spiegel a significant raise — say, $40,000 — that could well have been enough to entice him to stay in the district. It certainly would have been a more budgetable cost.

I encourage the Ferguson-Florrisant School Board to be more transparent when awarding superintendent benefits in the future. Furthermore, I am baffled by the board’s stance that this is sound school district budget management.

P.S. — Cheatham’s investigation of school administrator pay continues tonight, on Channel 4, at 10 p.m.

The post Supersize Compensation appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

According to his contract, the superintendent, Jeffery Spiegel, will begin to receive free health coverage for both himself and his dependents after June 30, 2011, until the end of Spiegel’s life. The superintendent and his dependents will not have to pay any premiums for this coverage after June 30.

This is pricey. According to Bock’s article, district officials estimates the cost of the lifelong health insurance to be more than $200,000.

A more typical health insurance benefit for superintendents at larger school districts is to provide health insurance to a superintendent and his or her family while the superintendent works at the district. (The Pleasant Hill superintendent’s contract is a good example).

If the Ferguson-Florrisant school board members were having a difficult time persuading Spiegel to stay at the district, they could have awarded him an increase in salary for that year, or an increased annuity payment — something that other school districts occasionally do. The health insurance that Spiegel was awarded is an unknown expense. It is impossible to know how long he and his dependents will use the benefit. Estimates, such as the $218,398 figure calculated by district officials, are only estimates.

Really, why would the Ferguson-Florissant school board, which oversees the district’s budget, prefer to award a benefit with an unknown cost to one that can easily be budgeted for? If board members thought Spiegel was worth an additional $218,398, the board members could have increased his salary by that amount. That approach would result in Spiegel’s salary increasing to $430,051. Of course, if the school board had taken that approach, the additional compensation would have been awarded in a much more transparent manner.

School districts report their superintendent’s salary each year to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. But districts do not report the non-salary benefits, such as annuity payments, car allowances, or, in this case, health insurance for life. So, Spiegel’s additional compensation cannot be found by looking at state data. Additionally, if an education reporter or interested district resident were to request Spiegel’s employment contract, which is where you can find information about non-salary benefits, they would only see that he was awarded health insurance for life — not the monetary value of that benefit. It took diligent reporting to suss out the $218,398 figure.

It is impossible to tell whether school board members thought that they could obscure the enormous sum of money awarded Spiegel by providing lifelong health insurance to its superintendent and his dependents. But, regardless of the intention, that is the end result. I’m glad the Post-Dispatch caught it.

Incidentally, the next Ferguson-Florissant school board meets next on Sept. 8.

The post $218,398 … Or More! appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

In this interesting paper, Show-Me Institute researcher Audrey Spalding analyzes a topic that has received little systematic study: the compensation of school superintendents. School superintendents are the CEOs of our public school districts. Missouri school districts spend roughly $ 9,500 per student in current

operating expenses. This rises to nearly $ 13,000 per student when capital expenditures are included. Superintendents, with the approval of their boards, make important decisions about how these resources are allocated.

They make staffing decisions, including hiring and firing teachers and principals. They set pay and benefits for these staff. They invest in technology and curricula. They open and close schools. In many of our counties, the public school system is the largest employer by far. This makes the school superintendent and the jobs and resources he controls a very important person.

So, how are these education decision-makers compensated? Which superintendent and district factors explain differences in superintendent pay? In this study, Spalding attempts to answer these questions by drawing on two new sources of data. The first are salary data reported to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE). These data are routinely reported to DESE by districts, but they are not reported by DESE to the general public. Spalding filed a sunshine request to obtain several years of these reported salary data. However, there is more to executive compensation than just salaries. To get a fuller picture of compensation, Spalding made sunshine requests to all Missouri school districts for superintendent contracts. These contracts provide important data about other benefits that superintendents receive, including the use of cars, additional annuities, vacation time, bonus pay, etc. She coded much of these contract data and worked them into her analysis.

After publication of this report, interested readers will be able to access the underlying data including all of the superintendent contracts, on the Show-Me Institute's website. This project thus advances the institute's mission to provide solid economic analysis of public policy, and also to increase government transparency.

Michael Podgursky
Professor of Economics
University of Missouri Columbia
Board Member, Show-Me Institute

Collected Superintendent Contracts

The post Actual Pay: A Survey of Missouri Public School Superintendent Salary and Benefit Packages appeared first on Show-Me Institute.

Missouri students will soon be returning to school, and although most school employees are still enjoying their summer breaks, superintendents are already hard at work preparing their districts for the annual back-to-school onslaught. Superintendents are the most highly compensated employees in education, earning an average salary of $106,368 in Missouri during 2009, according to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).

However, salary statistics considerably understate total superintendent compensation, leaving out benefits such as insurance, car allowances, and annuities. Furthermore, according to a new study by Audrey Spalding, public information specialist at the Show-Me Institute, although superintendent pay is correlated with many school district characteristics — total student enrollment, whether a district is urban or rural, percentage of residents with a college degree, etc. — compensation does not appear to depend on measures of either superintendent performance or student achievement. Given the amount of money paid to superintendents, it behooves Missourians to take a closer look at how superintendent compensation is determined and the benefits that the public receives for that cost.

Using superintendent contracts collected from nearly 90 percent of Missouri’s 521 public school districts (all the collected contracts are available at the Show-Me Institute’s website), Spalding shows that a quarter of all superintendents receive automatic raises built into their contracts. Other school districts look to surrounding districts to determine superintendent pay. For instance, the Lindbergh School District simply averages salary figures from 11 specific school districts and adds 11 percent to determine its superintendent’s pay.

Districts are required to report superintendent salary numbers to DESE, but the value of their contractual benefits are far less transparent. All superintendents receive some form of insurance through their districts, but contracts rarely specify the monetary value of the coverage. More hidden still are the annuities received by 6.9 percent of all Missouri superintendents. The majority of annuity payments are awarded to superintendents already making more than the median salary, which indicates that annuities are a supplement to regular salary, not a replacement for it. Sometimes this additional money can be quite substantial. The Parkway School District’s superintendent, for instance, earns both $200,000 in salary and a $30,000 annuity. Some superintendents say that annuities are used to offset the difference between their salary and what they could earn managing a private firm of similar size. However, the fact that annuity payments are not reported to DESE suggests that they can also serve as a means for districts to mask the full costs of superintendent compensation from the general public.

The simplistic methods used for determining superintendent salary and lack of transparency in compensation are both cause for concern, but more troubling is the fact that superintendent pay does not seem to correlate with student academic achievement. Spalding tested whether higher scores on the mathematics portion of the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) test led to increased pay for the superintendents and found no statistically significant relationship between the two variables. Moreover, most school districts do not have any specific method of evaluation spelled out in the contract, and less than 13 percent of districts tied superintendent raises to school board evaluations.

The point is not that school districts are overpaying superintendents. In fact, many — particularly in rural areas — may be underpaid. However, because nearly all superintendents are paid without regard to any kind of performance metric, it is extremely difficult to determine what benefits they bring to the district. If school boards tied at least some portion of superintendent salary to district goals and academic outcomes, and reported total compensation in a more transparent manner, the public would be in a better position to determine whether those resources are being employed wisely. As any good educator will tell you, knowledge is power.

John Payne is a research assistant at the Show-Me Institute, a Missouri-based think tank.

Related Links

Actual Pay: A Survey of Missouri Public School Superintendent Salary and Benefit Packages

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