01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, June 22, 2005

The angry June 16 Commentary piece "Deconstructing teacher-pension analysis," by Robert A. Walsh Jr., executive director of the National Education Association (NEA) Rhode Island, reminded me of Jack Nicholson's famous line in A Few Good Men. Rhode Island teachers' unions "can't handle the truth."

Mr. Walsh claimed that in my June 9 Commentary piece ("A sweet deal for R.I. teachers"), I used average-compensation data for teachers that were too high. In my article, since I was comparing both salary and pension benefits (which are based on the average of the three highest years of earnings), I noted the use of average compensation for experienced (i.e., top-step) teachers and their private-sector counterparts, to ensure an "apples to apples" comparison.

Mr. Walsh also attacked my adjustment of the average experienced teacher's salary to a comparable private-sector basis. I used a factor of 187 (the number of days teachers contractually work), divided by 250 (a rule of thumb for annual private-sector workdays). Mr. Walsh claims that private-sector professionals work fewer than 250 days per year. The most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show people with a bachelor's degree or higher working an average of 4.18 hours each weekend, or about 27 workdays per year. Being charitable to Mr. Walsh, and assuming that private-sector professionals take four weeks of vacation and all 10 federal holidays, that's 46 weeks of work, or 230 days. Add weekend work, and we're at 257 days. If anything, I understated an experienced teacher's effective salary.

Mr. Walsh didn't even try to justify why the teachers' unions resist paying 10 percent of the cost of their health insurance, while the national average for state- and local-government employees is 25 percent.

I struggled to understand Mr. Walsh's convoluted pension logic, which failed to address the conclusion of my article. A 58-year-old private-sector taxpayer retiring this year would (conservatively) have had to accumulate savings of $800,117 to match the retirement income of a retiring teacher -- an amount few people have achieved.

Finally, Mr. Walsh failed to address the critical point in this whole debate. Overwhelming evidence shows that despite Rhode Island's being one of the most generous states when it comes to spending on public education, its performance continues to be mediocre.

In its recent radio advertisements, the NEA claimed that we should be proud of Rhode Island's rising SAT scores. Here are the facts: From 1987-88 to 2002-03, Rhode Island's average SAT math score (for both public- and private-school students) increased by 8 points. Massachusetts's average math score increased by 23 points. Over the same period, Rhode Island's average SAT verbal score declined by 6 points, while Massachusetts's rose by 8 points. And in 2002-03, Rhode Island's combined SAT score of 1006 ranked 39th in the nation.

Bob Walsh says Rhode Island taxpayers should be proud of that performance. I say that if the teachers' unions continue to resist change, they will condemn our children to declining standards of living in the future. You decide who is right.

TOM COYNE

North Kingstown