Top systems, starting teacher pay [with updated link]

All of the top-performing systems we benchmarked (except for one) paid starting salaries that were above the OECD average relative to their GDP per capita. What is interesting, however, is that the range of starting salaries offered by the top performers is narrow: most systems pay a starting salary between 95 percent and 99 percent of GDP per capita (across the OECD as a whole, starting salaries range from 44 percent to 186 percent of GDP per capita).

That's one part of How the world's best-performing school systems come out on top.

Kentucky's 2007 gross domestic product per capita was $36,352, so we'd need to pay at least $34,534 to match that top-performing strategy. That's 12 percent more than our average 2007 teacher starting salary of $30,862.

The Best-performing report is my major subject for this week, introduced here, along with a link to download. The GDP figure is here, and the salary figure in OEA's District Data Profiles report here. [Update: the GDP report will not download from the link in the previous sentence. Instead, go here and download the "Gross State Product" report.]