01:00 AM EST on Friday, April 1, 2005

We take note of an interesting statistic revealed last week by the U.S. Census, in its report "Public Education Finances 2003." Rhode Island devotes a greater share of its per-pupil expenditures to teacher compensation than do any of the 49 other states and the District of Columbia.

That's right: Rhode Island ranks first -- or last, depending on one's point of view. The Ocean State apportioned 64.2 percent on teacher compensation, compared with New York's 64 percent, Maine's 60.4 percent, Utah's 59.5 percent, and Georgia's 59.4 percent. The average was about 55 percent.

Such an imbalance in teacher compensation might make sense if Rhode Island had all the money in the world, or if its public schools were among America's top-performing. But neither is true.

Clearly, Rhode Island, groaning under some of the highest property taxes in America, needs to make changes so that its spending is focused more on students than, for example, on teachers' health insurance without signficant co-pays, early retirements, or extraordinary sick-day policies. (For ideas on how teachers' contracts might be changed to better serve students, see The Education Partnership's new report, "Teacher Contracts: Restoring the Balance," available at www.edpartnership.org.)

Why devote a greater percentage of per-pupil spending to teacher compensation than any other state when our schools struggle with tattered textbooks, canceled art and music classes, leaky roofs, field-trip and extracurricular cutbacks, abandoned Advanced Placement classes, and more?