Here s an interesting and telling statistic. In Green Bay, Wisconsin, the average teacher got a 0.68% salary increase for 2001-02, while the cost of providing benefits in the district leapt 14.22%.

This fact brings up one of the more interesting questions regarding teacher supply-and-demand the effect of the benefits structure. All observers agree that teachers benefits the result of collective bargaining under a powerful public sector union are quite good in comparison with the rest of the population. But at least two questions arise from this situation: (1) Are teachers salaries taking it on the chin because of the relatively generous benefit plan? and (2) Would greater numbers of qualified people be attracted to teaching if the compensations were more heavily weighted towards take-home pay?