Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics - IEA

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PART 1: TEACHER RELATIVE PAY AND STUDENT PERFORMANCE 45 Table 11 presents the results of our regression of the TIMSS and the PISA mathematics scores on relative teacher salaries, GDP per capita, and income distribution for the 20 countries in our sample. Male salary ratios correlated significantly and positively with student 2003 mathematics test scores, but female salary ratios did not. A 10% increase in the ratio of male teacher salaries to male scientist salaries was associated with a 14% increase in the TIMSS mathematics score and a 10% to 11% increase in the PISA mathematics score. The relationship between female teacher salary ratio and student test score was not statistically significant, and the coefficient was smaller. We also estimated a model in which we added the secondary school net enrollment ratio in each country in order to “correct” for the possibility that student achievement scores in some countries were higher because a smaller proportion of the age cohort was in secondary school to take the test, making for a more select group of students and thereby biasing the achievement scores upward. However, including the net enrollment ratio had almost no effect on the regression results, largely because of the strong correlation between net secondary enrollment ratio and GDP per capita. The results in Table 11 suggest that even when we control for other factors that we know relate to higher test scores, students in countries where teachers are paid more relative to males’ salaries in competing professions do better on mathematics knowledge tests. Nevertheless, we have to be careful in interpreting this finding as a causal relationship: higher relative teacher salaries may attract teachers with greater mathematics skills, and these greater mathematics skills may result in more mathematics learning for students. However, as we discussed earlier, another argument is that countries that value high mathematics skills in students end up paying teachers more in order to recruit teachers with higher mathematics skills, and hence increase the probability that students learn mathematics well. Also, countries that are willing and able to recruit teachers with higher levels of mathematics skills into teaching are more likely to develop a demanding Table 11: Estimated Relationship between Student Performance on TIMSS and PISA Mathematics Tests and Teachers’ Salaries Relative to Scientists’ Salaries, Early 2000s (t-values in parentheses) Independent Variable TIMSS Mathematics Score Outcome Variable PISA Mathematics Score Model I Model II Model III Model IV Model I Model II Model III Model IV Male Teacher 135.0* 143.2** 101.5 109.9* Salary Ratio (1.81) (2.11) (1.57) (1.98) Female Teacher 71.4 123.3 41.4 93.0 Salary Ratio (0.74) (1.37) (0.50) (1.28) GDP per Capita 0.004** 0.002 0.004*** 0.002 0.004*** 0.002* 0.005*** 0.003** (2.57) (1.13) (3.03) (1.35) (3.61) (1.97) (4.05) (2.14) Gini Coefficient -3.27** -3.74** -3.36** -3.71** x 100 (-2.10) (-2.18) (-2.64) (-2.66) Intercept 313.3*** 468.5*** 347.1*** 486.2*** 309.7*** 469.0*** 345.8** 483.8*** Adjusted R 2 0.40 0.50 0.30 0.43 0.51 0.64 0.44 0.59 N 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 Note: *Statistically significant at 10% level of significance; **statistically significant at 5% level; ***statistically significant at 1% level. Source: Table 34 and Table 36, t-values in parentheses.
46 TEACHER PAY AND STUDENT MATHEMATICS ACHIEVEMENT mathematics curriculum that provides their students at all levels of schooling with greater opportunity to learn. But it is also possible that societies in which students score highly in mathematics are those societies with a large labor pool of mathematics skills. The teachers drawn from that labor pool are likely to be as adept in mathematics as are other university-educated professionals. They are also likely to be paid about the same as professionals in other mathematics-oriented occupations. This situation undermines the argument that the causality moves from the higher relative salaries for teachers to the higher mathematics scores for students. Rather, the higher student mathematics scores may indicate the existence of a relatively high level of mathematics knowledge in the society, which means that teachers and other mathematics professional salaries are therefore similar. Here, the fact that teachers have sufficient alternative employment possibilities available to them means that the government must pay them salaries similar to those of individuals in other mathematics-oriented professions in order to recruit them into teaching. Knowing what we know about how societies set teacher pay, the argument that higher relative teacher salaries are more likely to attract people with higher mathematics skills into teaching seems more logical to us than the argument that when teachers have better mathematics skills, they are more likely to receive salary offers commensurate with offers in other mathematics-oriented occupations. However, this latter argument cannot be ruled out as an “explanation” for our regression results. One of the mysteries to emerge from our analysis is why the relative salaries of females are less closely related with student performance than are the relative salaries of males. We think this is a result of a separate dynamic in most societies related to how well women are paid relative to men. As is the case with teachers’ relative salaries, this situation is a function of social norms that, in turn, are affected by political conditions, social movements, and so on. One possible explanation for the weaker relationship between females’ relative salaries and students’ mathematics test scores may be that in societies with greater income differences between men and women, salaries for female teachers are akin to salaries for female scientists. However, there appears to be little relationship in our sample between the ratio of male to female scientists’ salaries and female teachers’ salaries. Men and women tend to be paid essentially equal salaries in teaching. However, in many societies, the salaries paid to men and women working in other professions differ substantially. Therefore, the ratio of male teachers’ salaries to male scientists’ salaries may be a better reflection than the female teacher salary ratio of how much societies value education, and thus how well children in the society are likely to do in mathematics (and possibly reading). Confirmation of this premise would then suggest that relative salaries are less a measure of attracting high mathematics skills into teaching (although we found that the sign of the coefficient of the female teacher salary ratio was also positive and the coefficient almost as large as that for the male teacher salary ratio) than a measure of the willingness of a society to pay for a good education. This willingness to pay would likely also relate to the emphasis that parents at home place on good education, to pressure on children to do well, and so forth. If this scenario is valid, raising teacher relative salaries may attract a “better” teacher into schools to teach mathematics, but it would be difficult to raise teachers’ salaries in a society that does not already place considerable emphasis on its children doing well in school.
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