The authors of the November 2011 Heritage Foundation report “Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers” respond to questions and concerns, in the process showing that certain critical accusations—such as undercounting teachers’ work hours or overestimating retirement benefits—are simply false.

Are teachers paid too much? It's a question that would ignite heated debate at the most mellow of cocktail parties. But it's a question that AEI took head-on this year.

The average teacher working in a public school today receives total compensation roughly 52 percent higher than what he or she would receive in private-sector employment.

Teachers are the most important school-level factor in student success—but as any parent knows, all teachers are not created equal. Reforms to the current quite cursory teacher evaluation system, if done well, have the potential to remove the worst-performing teachers and, even more important, to assist the majority in improving their craft.

Even the most prominent critiques of teacher preparation typically seem to presume that teacher recruitment--whether it incorporates clinical preparation or what not--ought to be geared toward new college graduates gearing up for the same old jobs. There are smarter, better ways to approach the challenge at hand.

Last week, Manhattan's appellate court gave the New York City Department of Education the go-ahead to release the names and "value-added score" rankings of thousands of the city's teachers. These scores are designed to quantify the direct impact of teachers on student performance.

Student achievement should be incorporated into teacher evaluation and compensation, and transparency is a vital tool for recognizing excellence and shaming mediocrity. But a public data release is the wrong way to get there.

In an era of stories about teacher layoffs and teacher unions protesting for better pay and benefits, it's assumed that this profession gets the short end of the wage stick when it comes to serving in public schools.