New York’s lavish pay, pension and health care plans pushed for by powerful teachers’ unions helped ramp up spending on school districts to a staggering $89 billion — with seemingly little payoff but middling student test scores, studies show.
Empire State teachers were the second-highest compensated in the US during 2024, raking in an average of $92,696, according to a National Education Association study.
And their generous pay has only increased from the 2020-2021 school year, when New York teachers’ $87,738 was the highest average pay in the nation, the Empire Center for Public Policy found.
Employee benefits at that time were between 200% and 250% higher than the national average, according to the report from the Albany-based government watchdog group.
Ken Girardin, the center’s research director, said New York is one of only two states where teachers continue to get raises even after their labor contract expires.
“The union contracts are what really set us apart from other states,” he said.
Teacher pay — and other nation-leading education costs, from benefits to pensions to school construction — came under the microscope following a searing study released Friday by the Citizens Budget Commission.
The watchdog contrasted the nation-leading, Ivy League-level $36,293 average spent per student in New York with the state’s middle-of-the-pack National Assessment of Educational Progress test scores.
“Continuing to shovel more and more money every year to school districts without fundamentally questioning this status quo behavior will not solve this problem,” the CBC report argued.
The spending is in part ramped up by New York school districts’ benefits compensation through plum pension and health care plans pushed for by powerful unions such as the United Federation of Teachers.
The New York State Teachers Retirement System — one of the 10 largest pension plans in the nation — estimated that Empire State pensions will match 10% of all teacher payrolls on average during this school year.
Private sector 401(k) employer matches traditionally are much lower, according to a recent Vanguard study.
Unions have also pushed for earlier retirement dates and lower employee contribution rates in the pension plans.
Teachers hired before 2010 are currently able to stop paying into their pension after 10 years and can retire at age 55, so as long as they’ve been on the job for 25 years.
At the same time, the unions have complained of a teacher shortage.
Some experts cautioned against drawing a comparison between education spending and test results.
Challenges from the coronavirus pandemic, localized poverty and homelessness, language barriers and special needs all factor into expenses and performance results, said David Bloomfield, an education professor at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.
“The money has to be targeted to improve student learning and the deployment of staff has to be focused on that,” said Bloomfield.
“The onus is on the teachers to teach their students whatever their compensation.”
He called it a “fallacy” to believe salaries determine outcomes.
“There’s not a one-to-one correspondence between monetary inputs and performance outcomes,” said Bloomfield.
“The school system pays a lot more than just teacher salaries, but those expenses may not derive better student performance.”
UFT spokesperson Alison Gender likewise argued that the city’s school spending isn’t just going to teachers.
“New York City’s school spending reflects the city’s commitment to all its students, from those living in homeless shelters to English language learners and children who require special education services,” she said.
New York City Republican lawmakers laid the lion’s share of the blame on the UFT for pushing for higher spending and blocking institutional changes.
“We cannot allow the grifters at the teachers union to again scam us out of more money without any accountability or reforms,” said Councilwoman Vickie Paladino (R-Queens). “Frankly, the spending wouldn’t bother anyone if we were getting results. But we’re not.”
“A whopping $36,000 per student, yet teachers are still buying their own supplies and performance is abysmal,” said Councilwoman Inna Vernikov (R-Brooklyn). “The UFT is up there with the MTA as another financial black hole bleeding our city dry.”
State Education Department spokesman J. P. O’Hare lambasted the CBC report as fundamentally flawed.
“This report is nothing more than a series of strategically cherry-picked data sets strung together in a way that supports the Commission’s ‘conclusion’ that more money should equal higher achievement,” he said.
“The bottom line is that New York State provides a level of services and support (including transportation and safe facilities) that far outpace what other states across the country require, as well as the federal minimums for students with disabilities and English Language Learners. New York’s education spending figures reflect that the state is working to provide students with the support systems they need to be successful, including those with disabilities, significant cognitive difficulties, and special needs.”
