What? You think our teachers are overpaid compared to, say, Mexico or Korea?

[maggiesfarmer]

18. I hate this graphic.

Don't get me wrong, Scuba, I agree with your point, at least that teachers in the US should be better compensated. I'm not sure this graphic has enough information to draw a conclusion about hours worked. Further, I believe there may be good reasons to extend the school day or extend the school year and I would expect teacher's hours to increase if either of those happens.

This graphic raises so many questions it makes me question the point that I think we agree on:

1. The headline of both the OP and the graphic refer to 'teachers' in the general sense but the data is specific to primary school teachers. That doesn't necessarily mean the content is wrong but it does cause me to question if the headlines are intended to confuse the larger issue.

2. I had a teacher who taught me to never trust a graph whose axes weren't fully labeled. "hours worked" -- is that supposed to be annually? I'm curious, because the top seems just over 1000 which seems low, even for a 9 month a year job (40 hours/week * 39 weeks = 1560). A full time, year round worker (assume 40 hours/week and 50 weeks/year) works ~2000 hours annually and I'm shocked that some group of teachers don't average anywhere close to that per the graphic.

3. how are teachers in other countries with longer school years working significantly less than US teachers? If we believe the graphic, then none of those schools with longer school days and/or longer school years are working more (or even the same). that seems odd.

4. I agree with another poster that "teacher salary after 15 years / GDP per capita" as a measure of comparison isn't intuitive and at a minimum begs some explanation over why that metric was selected. The denominator "GDP per capita" is the mean value of goods and services produced by a single person in that country. Dividing a teacher's salary by that number tells us the ratio of the mean primary teacher's salary to mean GDP per capita, or the ratio of the teacher's salary to the value of goods and services provided by one average citizen. So, a ratio of 1 means that they are compensated an amount equal to the value of goods and services their home country produces annually. This metric is going to push countries with a higher GDP down the scale by virtue of a larger denominator (and push countries with higher populations up). I suspect that if countries like Qatar, Monaco, UAE, etc.. were on the list they should show up as outliers on the low end of the right axis. The data may be more meaningful if graphed on a scale where teacher's salaries are all converted to the same (relatively stable) currency instead of this metric. Another knock against this metric is that one would assume that if primary teachers are doing a good job, they'll be helping improve their country's "GDP per capita". However, the better the "GDP per capita" gets, the more it hurts them in that metric. [Note, I'm not an economist -- if this metric has meaning and credibility to experts in that field I'd appreciate a brief education].

5. Do we have any information regarding what criteria were necessary for a country to make this chart? Noting that China, India, Russia and Brazil are conspicuously absent from both of the lists and some countries are on one side but not the other makes me believe that lack of data didn't drive the exclusions.

6. A graph comparing conditions in different nations which lists a singular "Korea" without a directional modifier is rather suspect on it's face, IMO. This is showing my geographical ignorance, but what's the distinction between "Belgium (Fr.)" and "Belgium (Fl.)"? One Korea, two Belgiums.

7. I'd be interested in seeing teacher hours worked measured against some metric for "educational time" that factors in length of the school day and the school year and compares. What would be even more interesting is data comparing "teacher hours worked" to "student knowledge growth" but that would be damn difficult data to reliably measure.