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Well, these numbers certainly don't seem like teachers are being drastically underpaid like I commonly hear. Per wikipedia[1], 73% of individuals in America earn income less than the average teacher salary of $69k.

These numbers are just averages though - are long-time teachers dominating the pay scale and new teachers are getting paid a pittance?

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I think it would be more useful to compare to other professions that require a degree, rather than all Americans.

More useful still to compare to other professions that require a graduate degree, as most teacher positions require this.

I checked 2 states, CA and NJ just require a bachelor's with a 3.0 GPA. Where are you getting the idea that most require advance degrees?

That's actually my bad - I know a number of high school teachers with graduate degrees, but I assume you're right.

Some states do require it, and in others it’s practically required if you plan to teach more than five or so years, because your comp will quickly plateau at a not very high even by teacher standards level if you don’t.

How recent is that? In my country, you had to study for 7 years before being a teacher, and pass an exam (master degree plus two years learning from another teacher).

Then, due to shortages (caused by low pay), they removed 2 years around 2010, so now its only 5 years - a master degree. They made the passing grade at the exam so low for some teachers (math and physics teachers) that you can treat it like it doesn't exist, and while the current government won't do anything next year because they have interest in makebelieve the past 4 years the education recruitment process hasn't been a disaster, you have talks about diminishing the requirements to a bachelor degree (they will wait until after the european elections to start pushing the idea imho).

So most active teachers in place today had to study 7 years before working with kids. But when i will check the requirement in two-three years, i'll be able to say "they're pretty well paid for people with bachelor's degree!" too, event id it wouldn't be the reality for most teachers.

I don't know about those states, but in the US a graduate degree is not typically required to start teaching. There may be a requirement to earn a graduate degree within a certain period, but often not a hard requirement, more a soft "get this if you want a promotion" requirement. Instead they have to get (and maintain) certifications to keep their job. They can be hired without the certifications on a provisional basis.

https://www.gadoe.org/Finance-and-Business-Operations/Budget...

Going with the state whose schools I'm most familiar with. In GA those are the base salaries. Districts can increase the pay if they have the funding. Sometimes for specific fields only, math teachers in one county were getting paid almost 50% extra for a while due to a severe shortage a decade or so back.

If you don't get a graduate degree most teachers will cap out at T-4 or T-5, which this year maxes at $58k and $66k with 21+ years of experience. If you earn through an EdD [0] you'll be at the T-7 level which is $81k. $23k or 15k difference

[0] Doctorate of education, often a non-dissertation degree with a large practicum component, tedious to earn more than hard to earn.

Next go look at their provisional teaching requirements. California has a BSR test, that you have to pass, showing you can read, write and do math slightly above the grade level you will be teaching. Then you can get a provisional license and eventually meet the actual teaching requirements.

Not all degrees are created equal. My understanding is that education degrees are particularly easy to get.

Lots of teachers have masters or PHD's. Those are generally not that easy to get.

Yes there has been a lowering of standards to get a teaching certificate in many states, but that's because they are desperate to do anything possible to get more teachers in classrooms without having to raise pay. Not because it's a good idea. Many teaching certificates are handed out "provisionally", and give you a few years to earn whatever is actually required, while still allowing you to actively teach in a classroom.

A decent number of teachers have doctorates, but I’ve never met one with a PhD. Teachers are often paid more for having a doctorate, and so they get EdDs, which are significantly easier to get.

> so they get EdDs, which are significantly easier to get.

That was also my understanding.

I have read lots of complaints from seemingly smart teachers about having to waste their time on getting one of those (but none of them worried about being able to do the work and get the degree).

I have also read lots of entitled stuff from seemingly very dumb teachers with said degree who thought they were smarter than other teachers because of it -- and smarter than pretty much everybody out there without a "doctorate" as well.

And I've read research that shows that the degrees (bachelors/masters/"doctorate"/phd) actually doesn't matter much for people's teaching abilities...

> Teachers make on average 5% less than 10 years ago, and 9% less than the peak in 2009-10, adjusted for inflation.

Yes, that sucks, but regardless with the numbers as presented, it is hard to say teachers are scandalously underpaid.

I highly encourage you to go do the job and see if you still think that's true. :)

Well, after getting paid insane amounts of money to write software, pretty much any job I could realistically get will appear underpaid to me. Having said that, I'm sure there are investors at hedge funds that would commit suicide if they only earned what I earn in a year.

Why do so many people continuously make this mistake? How hard a job allegedly is is irrelevant. What matters is how hard it is to fill the positions. Given that we can require so many to hve masters and doctorates and still get average salary where it is tells you its easy to fill, therefore these guys are overpaid, if it was hard to fill we would hace a higher percentage as just bachelors and comp would be higher.

States have been dropping teaching certificate requirements for a long time. Some states go so far as to give pretty much anyone that can pass the background check a provisional certificate, giving them years to meet the actual requirements.

Staffing of teachers is a hard job, some districts have full time staff just trying to fill the classrooms.

This is probably true for nearly all employees who have held their same job during that time, since raises rarely exceed inflation, especially recently.

A lot of people are in the same boat there, not just teachers. Although as typical "graduate jobs", teaching will have less of a premium then it used to with the glut of graduates.

Being a teacher also requires a degree in many places, some require a masters for full license.

Average bachelor's degree is ~$30k for in-state public universities, not accounting for interest. Master's in education will be ~$40k.

Starting salary with a Master's in most states is ~$45k

> new teachers are getting paid a pittance?

New teachers can more easily move to where there is better pay/demand for teachers. So I think they tend to balance out a bit.

In our district, starting teacher salary is $59k and so we see a lot of young teachers.

Well:

>3,500 school districts (28.6%), employing nearly 300,000 teachers still offer a starting salary below $40,000.

>They also say "23.2% of school districts pay beginning teachers a salary of at least $50,000. These districts employ nearly 1.3 million (42%) teachers."

That is, it's not just long-time versus new teachers, it's district to district: not all districts are the same size and some big districts pay better.

Average salary also seems to correspond pretty well to blue-state-ness in the top 10, with the exception of Alaska, for obvious reasons.

If the goal is to determine how well-paid teachers are, the analysis should be standardized against typical wages for all workers in each area.

There is a huge difference in salaries between elementary and high school education, probably based on the traditional gender difference between the two fields. My wife has taught for 10 years as an elementary teacher and earns below the average teacher salary for our state.

A tenured university professor in argentina barely earns 20k...

They have tenure, at least.

I believe average teacher turnover is < 5 years, which would mean that the field is not dominated by old timers.

Lets say we look at two class rooms. One turns over every year and one has a ~40 year veteran. The average salary at any given year is half new and half veteran. If we look at turnover over 10 years, the average is less than 5, no?

Why would we look at it over 10 years, instead of asking how long the teachers were teaching for? That artificially misrepresents the 40 year tenure as 10.

If you only look at a single year, then it paints the picture that half of teachers quit after a year but in this scenario 10/11 do.

My point is that different studies can have different methodologies, still be valid, and without digging deeper can be misleading. You'll need more than "I believe the average is" to really know what's going on.

Not to mention they all qualify for a pension after 20 years.

[citation needed]

This is almost certainly not true, given that comp would be state by state and county by county and district by distrct.

What gave you that idea?

Depends on the state. In New York, teachers are doing OK (and, frankly, some of my daughter's teachers are awesome).

In West Virginia things are more bleak.

Not to mention, most Americans work 245 days a year, but teachers 181 days a year.

> Well, these numbers certainly don't seem like teachers are being drastically underpaid like I commonly hear.

I think you've expressing an underlying bias here that "average" is a fine pay for teachers.

You should at the very least be comparing to the median salary of professions with similar educational requirements.

Government employees (teachers) get pensions after a certain period so it's not a good comparison as they make far more money in the long run.

Not necessarily. Lots of governments and unions have negotiated reduced defined benefit pensions for newer (re:younger) workers.

Still, the question is how does this compare to other fields.. not the same field a few years previously.

> Not necessarily.

So you are saying it is a good comparison? Or less strong? Do you have an example?

Source that all federal, state, county, and local employees employed by any government in the diverse country that is the US all magically get the same retirement structure?

I never stated such a thing, nor mentioned magic. The discussion is around statistics and averages and I was writing generally. It's disingenuous to assume the same thing applies in absolute terms.

> 73% of individuals in America earn less than the average teacher's salary of $69k.

And around 95% of degree holding individuals do less work than the average teacher, and almost all of that 73% are less qualified and probably in less debt from degree courses.

My son is currently choosing what he's going to move on to after he finishes school, and I'm honestly recommending military service over teaching.

It's a hard job, with working hours that are beyond ridiculous, and you end up spending some of your salary on school supplies for your classroom and for your kids. Not to mention keeping your desk drawer stocked with snacks for the kids that don't have food.

We need to wake up. If we want our children to be babysat, then keep things as they are. If we want our children to be educated, then we need to attract the best to the profession. "If you can't do, teach" needs to be reversed.

> Per wikipedia[1], 73% of individuals in America earn income less than the average teacher salary of $69k.

This is irrelevant to determining whether or not a given occupation is underpaid (or overpaid).

Supply and demand determine the appropriate price, and if you think there are insufficient teachers of insufficient quality, then the price is too low. Similarly, if you had a too many well qualified people clamoring to be teachers, then the price would be too high.

However, given what we know about what teachers have to deal with on a day in and day out basis, plus having to forego vacations during the school year and having an extremely rigid schedule, I would assume people with options (proxy for high quality) to forego teaching if the pay was only “average”.

And that “average” is for professions requiring similar levels of time/stress/injury risk/time off/flexibility/upward potential/etc, so a simple mean or median average of all US working adults’ pay is meaningless.

Sure, and that is an economic problem for the state/county or whoever sets the paybands to figure out. My usage of "underpaid" is more about individuals self reporting on being underpaid. Teachers are probably the #1 group of workers I hear frequently complaining about being underpaid. I would have guessed they were getting paid like $40k on average based on the complaints.

Your anecdotal data about who complains more seems like a meaningless distinction. You don’t think hotel maids and strawberry pickers and retail workers and food prep workers complain about being underpaid?

The only relevant question is are the people who are teachers now of sufficient inherent quality and of sufficient motivation? If not, then there is likely a problem with the prices (since it seems evident across many, many jurisdictions and management levels).

Also does not help that violent and disruptive students are somehow not automatically kicked out of school.

No, it is not a meaningless distinction. You are using underpaid as a take on supply/demand problem, whereas I am using underpaid as a person's personal take on their salary. If the supply/demand curve showed that teachers should be getting paid around $20k/yr, they would almost universally claim to be underpaid, despite being able to fill the open positions. Saying "Well, you're not actually underpaid" means nothing if people feel like they are underpaid.

> what teachers have to deal with on a day in and day out basis

Yes, this is bad

> plus having to forego vacations during the school year

? Teachers don't typically work during christmas, spring break, etc, do they? Plus they get the entire summer off? Whatever the arguments around sufficient salary, worker protection etc, I can hardly see vacation time being a factor. I'd absolutely kill to have summers off.

It is a pro and a con. The teachers I know have ~6 weeks off in the summer, and the other non school days, they have training and whatnot.

And those summer weeks are often the business travel days. I much prefer traveling on off peak days, and would hate being restricted to travel during the busiest times of everything.

As for other holidays, the teachers I know seem to work a lot of hours at home, so not necessarily a “holiday”. And the same problem exists, only being able to do things at busy times. Which isn’t bad, but it would suck if that was the case for 40 straight years.

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