> On the other hand, many of my US high school teachers literally had to work at Wal-mart on the side. Unthinkable elsewhere.
US teachers are among the best paid teachers on earth. What US teachers are arguing about, is they believe they should be paid something closer to good nurse wages or engineers (ie closer to $80k to $100k, rather than $60k or $70k).
Some facts:
Entry level US high school teachers earn 1/3 more than in Japan or Ireland. They earn more than in Canada. They earn around 40% more than in New Zealand. They earn 80-100% more than in Israel. They earn slightly more than in the Netherlands and Austria, and 20% more than in South Korea (which pays its teachers very well vs their national income).
Entry level elementary school teachers in the US earn about 1/3 more than in South Korea, about 20% more than in Austria, 10-15% more than in Canada, 30-40% more than in Ireland and Japan, and drastically more than in countries like New Zealand or Italy.
At both high school and elementary levels, for both entry level and 10 years of experience, the US outranks Canada, Italy, Ireland, Japan, Austria, New Zealand. It's very comparable to what you see in the Netherlands and Australia for those.
Across each field of education, the US comes in in the top seven or eight for teacher pay, typically closer to the top 5. The one place it lags abnormally is the top end pay scale for teaching, where salaries don't match what you'd expect based on the mid-tier and entry level teacher salaries the US offers.
The US only consistently trails a few countries like Germany and Switzerland, when it comes to teacher pay. Those two pay particularly well for teaching (Switzerland more or less matches what you'd expect given their very high national incomes; and Germany pays an unusually outsized salary for teachers based on their national income level).