The Dirty Secret About Illinois' Two Tier School Districts

District 65 Teachers make 20% less than their ETHS counterparts. It's even worse in other surrounding suburbs.

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In the comments from my post the other day, there was a discussion about whether it is time to consolidate District 65 and ETHS. Both districts share the same borders, the same tax base, District 65 is having financial problems, and there are increasingly issues caused by a lack of consistent policies. I took my ADHD medication that day, so I fell down the rabbit hole investigating this.

Everyone I spoke with said the reason this hasn’t happened (and won’t happen) is because it would require raising the District 65 teacher compensation up to the level of ETHS teachers. So what does that mean, exactly?

Total Compensation

Total compensation data comes from the ISBE Salary Study. You can view my cleaned up data tables at this link. All of these metrics are for all staff who have the job title “Teacher” and are full-time. I have excluded special education roles, etc. This is just staff teachers so I can compare apples to apples. This is total compensation, which includes base salary plus what the ISBE calls “Other Benefits.”

I also split it out by teacher sex.¹ You will see that District 65 is about 75%/25% women-to-men and ETHS is closer to 60%/40%. You can see that there is even a gender pay gap within the ETHS staff of about 10%. There is no such gap within District 65.

District 65 teachers make about 23% less in total compensation than their ETHS Equivalents.

One argument I’ve heard is that ETHS teachers teach more advanced subjects, like AP Physics which requires a specialized degree, so they should be compensated better. I would argue, that this is visible on the high end of compensation tables, not the average or medians. For instance, The highest paid teacher in ETHS makes $185,485.09 in total compensation, compared to $147,709.42 in District 65 (25% more).

Another argument is that ETHS teachers tend to have longer tenure and turnover is higher in D65. Therefore, the difference is due to bias related to seniority. However, even the entry level educators make 18% more in ETHS compared to District 65. The lowest paid full-time teacher in ETHS makes $59,345.53 compared to District 65’s lowest total comp of $48,461.98. I taught ninth grade science for a year², and I am skeptical that the skills required to teach 9th grade science differs that much from teaching 8th grade science.

Again, all my data is available in this spreadsheet. The analytics focuses on full-time staff with the job title “Teacher”. If you still are skeptical, you can review the compensation tables below for 2022-2023 from the Union contracts and see the inequity yourself:

• District 65 2023-24 Comp Table

• District 202 ETHS 2023-24 Comp Table

D65 vs D202 Hours per Week

According to the collective bargaining agreements, not only are the D65 teachers paid less, they’re required to work an extra hour per week!

From the ETHS/D202 collective bargaining agreement;

Not more than fourteen hundred (1400) minutes per week will be regularly assigned to classroom teaching and supplementary duties. Educator preparation time, department meetings, faculty meetings, and individual work with students will be in addition to the periods of assigned time.

From District 65’s last CBA;

Beginning in the 2017-2018 school year, the educator's schedule shall not exceed 1450 classroom pupil contact minutes per week (1490 minutes for Early Childhood unless grant requirement changes make it feasible to go below 1490 and 1680 minutes for Head Start educators unless grant requirement changes make it feasible).

Comparable Districts

The next question is - is this an Evanston thing or a state-wide thing? The state doesn’t publish any metrics on this, but we can use the same data set. I can filter this out again to feature only full-time teaching (excluding special education, bilingual, etc) and show some comparable districts:³

If you zoom in on individual cities you will see it’s much worse. In Skokie for instance, the Niles D219 teachers make on average almost 44% more than their K-8 counterparts and would require an 80% raise to get to parity!⁴ For comparison, statewide average for teacher total compensation is $79,320 (in this data sheet).

(Update: the above table was corrected to be more statistically accurate - see this post for details)

I’ve included CPS at the bottom, since they no longer have any pay differences between the K-8 and High School educators. I think it’s very interesting to see the Niles K-8 compensation line up with CPS but the High School pay much higher.

This is Sexist, Anti-Equity, and Hard to Fix

This part is my opinion, so comment if you disagree.

I’m sitting here and thinking: wow, this two tiered system here in Illinois is absolutely perpetuating the gender pay gap, given that K-8 districts tend to have more women. In Evanston, for instance, District 65 is 75% women versus 60% at ETHS.

And even if there wasn’t a gender split, it fundamentally devalues the work of K-8 educators. Other than perhaps AP teachers, I can’t come up with a compelling reason why you should pay K-8 teachers so much less other than “historical sexism.” I’m not the only one who feels this way, for what it’s worth, the Chicago Public Schools and other school districts outside of Illinois would agree.⁵

So back to the original subject - what’s a ballpark for the increase in total compensation if we were to consolidate ETHS and District 65, and bring District 65 teachers up to the compensation level of ETHS?

My calculations: Around $20 million bucks per year (applying a ~22% raise to all union education staff). (For Data, see the “merged comp” tabs here)

So that leaves me feeling stuck - on one hand, I think it’s an equity issue and all teachers in the same town, with the same residents, and the same kids, should be paid equally. On the other hand, I have a hard time seeing a pathway where consolidation would save $20 million bucks to offset the compensation increase. Even if they eliminated the entire D65 administrative apparatus, that’s less than $20 million (although it’s close).

So we’re just stuck in this sub-optimal place with no ability to fix? Is there a compelling argument for paying K-8 teachers so much less than High School teachers? Please comment if you have any ideas or thoughts on the subject and be nice to each other.

1. The District or ISBE does not publish the teacher’s gender identity and the tools I used to guess the teacher’s sex are rough (using the first name). I recognize there may be some errors in this and I failed to include teachers who identify as non-binary or not as their gender assigned at birth. There is just no public information available on that.

2. Shout out to Northwestern’s Reach for the Stars Program which put Grad Students in High School classrooms.

3. The number of teachers may seem low, this is because this analysis considers only educators with the specific role of “Teacher” - so I am excluding special education and bilingual teachers. I need to be able to compare apples to apples.

4. I really couldn’t believe this number, but I double and triple checked this. There appears to be an inverse relationship between the size of the district and the compensation for educators. Niles HS has like 4-5 feeder districts for instance.

5. I looked up my Alma Mater, Troy High School in Troy, Michigan. They do not have pay scales that differ from K-8 vs 9-12. But it is a full K-12 District.