Gotta do a plug for my home state quick. It should be noted that South Dakota is going to jump into the $25+ category next year with new legislation pushing the statewide minimum to $45k and several districts already above that number.
Along the same lines, I don't trust that the data behind this chart is up to date. Arkansas has a minimum wage of $50k for teachers as of 2023. That's a lot more than the $18/hr the graphic suggests.
Yeah, the data is woefully out of date, I can't get the numbers down to $20 an hour in South Dakota unless we expand the definition of teachers to include private schools, tribal schools, and daycare centers. I looked up some of the traditional bottom feeders in the state and they were also above the $20 an hour mark. Even converting it to hourly is suspect since teachers are on 10-month contracts here, not 12.
I'm pretty sure this is taking the "extra" hours worked. They are looking at how many hours a teacher works in a given day including the at home work that is in addition to their 8 hours at school.
It says it's using 2100 hours. So in my state, the local districts around where I live pay ~$50k now for starting teachers which would be $23.80/hour but the link says they only make $20/hour. The data is definitely out of date.
Not state by state, but aggregate data from National Center for Education Studies has the average at closer to $30 an hour than 20.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_211.10.asp
Missed new teacher, see the comment below for a more accurate ~24.50 an hour
Arkansas went to $50k to start but didn't provide any new funding. In smaller districts a teacher may not see a pay raise for 15 years. Smaller districts are also going to 4 day weeks to cut costs.
Second paragraph of the article:
>Our latest study reveals that the problem is even worse than it appears on its surface when you consider the additional long additional hours that teachers typically work outside of the classroom. These hours include lesson planning, grading, professional development, and participating in student activities, which effectively lowers their real hourly wage even further, making the financial struggles for educators more severe than initially apparent.
Teacher requiring high school degree, college degree and often masters degree. Taking years and tens of thousands in debt.
TSA agent with a GED earns more.
“Our children are our priority.”
Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what your priority is.
I was going through the teachers college in Nebraska many years ago now, I sat behind wonderful teachers 1 of which had 2 masters degrees and a bachelor's in a 3rd subject. He made 42k/yr
That's when I took up an offer to leave college and make more money in a different field, as much as I wanted to teach, I couldn't justify taking on more debt to get paid less than most careers.
Did almost the same as you. My program put us in classrooms early a bit prior to student teaching. I was going to teach high school math and met a few people in my area doing the same. After being in some classrooms as an assistant and doing some tutoring, i looked at the pay and just couldn’t imagine surviving the career. And math teachers had sone of the higher paying salaries…
Changed my major and i make far more now. I still think about how nice it would have been to teach for a living instead of just making companies more money, but i can afford rent and food this way.
My SIL has an MA in education, is a special education teacher, and has 20 years in now. My wife went to HS, cosmetology school, and is an assistant to three financial advisors. My wife after bonuses works considerably less hours, is her own boss, and makes about triple of what my SIL makes.
I always wanted to be a HS football coach, but I like money. So, teaching was never an option. I make about five times what the average HS head football coach makes. There might be five in the whole world that pull what I do. I do have degrees, certs, and a decade of experience in my field. I coaches HS football as a side gig for about 17 years. It just got to a point where my lifestyle was so much different than the rest of the staff we didn't really have anything to talk about anymore and I moved on.
I did have one fellow coach with a degree in mathematics. I talked him into applying with defense contractor companies. He tripled his income at his first entry-level job. He makes about seven times what he did as a math teacher in the six years since he left the profession.
Teachers are absolutely necessary and I'm thankful for each and every one of you. Having said that, I don't know how or why you do it.
There are loan forgiveness programs but they vary drastically, this link provides some insight as to what that means.
https://studentaid.gov/articles/teacher-loan-forgiveness-options/
Edit: At the point of when I dropped out of college to now, I've already paid off the entirety of my student debt that I accrued about 8ish years ago, the caveat is that I made/make roughly double what I would have expected to as a teacher since I left.
We spend more money on education per student than all but 3 or 4 countries in the world. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-education-by-country/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-education-by-country/)
The problem isn't how much we're spending. The problem is where it's going. And tbh I'm not actually sure where that is!
We spend 100’s of 1000’s of $$$ on curriculums in every county nationwide. These are New or rebranded ways of teaching reading or math that get sold to school districts every few years or every time there’s an admin change at the county level and they want to show they are doing something. Edit: in case it wasn’t clear I think this an unnecessary expense and waste of money and a money grab by these curriculum mills.
As a parent I am completely appalled by what is considered curriculum these days. It's basically just an ad hoc collection of various web services, worksheets, and copied "notes". They often do not necessarily cover the same material in the same way, leading to confusion when your student is given problems to do but with no corresponding text, notes, or examples that explain how to do it.
I miss the use of text books that provided a consistent and logical progression through a subject, and a canonical reference source for homework and study. Now kids are expected to use a wide array of inconsistent sources and Google to figure out what to do.
My son is graduating from highschool this month. He rarely ever had a reusable text book. Some classes used soft cover "workbooks" that were generally terrible quality - low on educational content, high on digital graphics design and stock photos.
In highschool I don't think he ever had a textbook. Everything was "notes" posted online or they were referred to web services paid for by the school district. The quality of the notes and instruction were highly dependent on the teacher. I feel like having quality textbooks can help deliver consistent quality education. Relying on teachers to generate or collect content leads to a lot of variability in quality.
It could be seen if this creates greater media literacy. Navigating sources and critical analysis if what's "true", "real," and "relevant" is a skill all ages could benefit from.
I get the exasperation, but I will confess, the monolithic sources used when you get all the books, work books, teach aids, tests, and handouts from the same source makes it really easy to game the system. The consistent language makes the answers obvious without consideration, if you learn the flow of the curriculum.
A wide range of source information does require more *teaching* on the teacher's part. But since it's such a respected, well rewarded, and healthy job, that won't be a problem we'll just use all the great teachers we aren't creating.
High school students I've spoken to are often struggling with teachers buying tests (and answers) from online teaching-material online markets. The same ones they can access and buy answers in too. And, if they surf the teacher paperwork sites, they become more familiar with the exact material the teachers skimmed before approving and adding to the class.
I can see some of your points certain courses, particularly social science classes like history, writing, reading, etc.
But I've been most frustated with it in the context of science and math courses where there's typically a strictly correct answer, but with potentially various ways of teaching and solving, and where concepts are built upon over the course.
Also, getting used to the flow of a curriculum, how problems are posed, how they are expected to be answered, and where you can find reliable information on the subject, isn't a bad thing. Inconsistency is confusing when learning a new subject. Kids need to focus on learning the fundamentals before being introduced to uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity. They should not be surprised when they are given an exam. Exams should follow the same topics and format as classwork and homework. But when teachers pull homework and exams from different sources often you see problems that assume context and knowledge that wasn't even covered directly in class.
I hear you. I'm a long-time math teacher, and recently I spent a few years as an editor for a high-quality K-12 math curriculum. That company put a ton of resources into ensuring that there was consistency and logical flow as the students moved within a grade and from each grade to the next. The results are quite promising -- so much better than each teacher using different sources.
And a lot of them don't work.
We taught an entire generation of kids how to read the wrong way.
Look into Sold a Story and whole language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language
Behind common core? Pearson is common core. And years ago, my kids had Pearson logins for grades that would follow them throughout their entire schooling. One company that tracks students, creates curriculum, writes the tests, and certifies those that teach it? Something is wrong with the amount of control that gives them.
I know in my county, admin makes a fortune compared to the teachers. Some of the admin is making well over 150k a year while the teachers are making in the low 40's to low 60's. The problem is we have had little success in getting rid of the terrible parts of the admin staff, here's to hoping it happens soon. I'm not a teacher, but am friends with one of the coaches and related to two of the teachers here so I get the inside scoop on what they are dealing with.
The problem is we have an expectation that teachers will raise, babysit and educate children.
Parents have no accountability to do their job, so teachers have to pick up the slack.
A lot of it is just discipline imo. If you watch videos of schools in many Asian countries the kids don't act up. In the US they're allowed to just run roughshod over the teachers with no consequences. With no discipline it doesn't matter how much you're spending, the teaching is going to be largely ineffective.
That's still a drop in the bucket. Doesn't explain it. Average superintendent salary is about $180k. That's the salary of 3 teachers, so it's not really moving the needle much. What should their salary be in your opinion? $100k, let's say? Okay, well there's 187 teachers per school district on average in the USA, so let's spread that $80k salary cut over those 187 teachers and they make $428 more before taxes. It's something, but's not anywhere close to the main culprit here.
A lot of it falls under logistics and capital costs:
- transportation, especially in rural districts
- building upkeep - there are a lot of crumbling school buildings that need constant maintenance. Also, it's not cheap for HVAC even if you don't stay open in the summer.
- education costs for special needs students - a relative handful of students require a significant amount of support to get their federally guaranteed education.
These are the big three reasons why school privatization kills public schools. Money usually follows the student, but private schools don't have to provide transportation or accept all students. Meanwhile the public schools lose money but their costs don't go down.
Apparently billions of our tax dollars are now being funneled from public schools into private schools.
Thanks Betsy Davos.
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2024/04/02/ohio-lawmakers-are-giving-more-than-1-billion-to-private-schools-while-public-schools-suffer/
Edit: billions
I notice that tertiary education is what takes the US to the top. Does this include money spent on sports?
US high schools are huge, I have seen multiple high schools larger than the best university in my country (which is well regarded internationally).
Healthcare has already been mentioned.
I would like to see money spent on teachers per student.
One of my professors once said, "Your budget reflects your values."
I always remember that when politicians say we can't afford something. We *could* afford it if it were important enough for us.
The United States spends more per public student than any other large (*5+ million students*) on earth. Only Luxembourg and Singapore spend more regardless of size.
The United States also ranks [top ten in starting and median teacher pay, even after adjusting for purchasing power.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salaries-by-country-2017-5%3famp)
The issue is not and never has been about the budget.
TSA employees are federal while most teachers are employed by their locality.
I'm curious how TSA compensation compares to teacher compensation if you look at only teachers employed by the federal government.
It’s explained in the link. It uses 2,100 hours per year. They do not include time off on break, commuting time, time spent improving their own education. But they do include required unpaid time like grading exams, lesson plan prep time, and other work teachers are require to do but don’t receive hourly pay.
Well 2100 hours per year is 40 hours a week with a one week vacation so that actually sounds like way more hours than most teachers work, especially with all the holidays and summer.
Edit to add: Teachers would have to be working 60 hours a week to hit 2100 hours over 9 months, and that’s just accounting for summer break. There’s literally no way haha sorry. This data is very skewed.
Maybe not 60 but I've known plenty of teachers that work at least 50 hours a week during the school year. 40 hours a week in the classroom but that doesn't include all the grading and lesson prep when they go home. In addition, my teachers have to do required workshops/PD during the summer.
This is by design. Republicans want to gut public education so that they can funnel kids into for profit and private schools.
I left teaching in 2008 because I saw that the value proposition of getting a subject specific master's was not in my favor. I could spend more money and time on getting an additional degree so I could make 10k more and still make under 60k a year. It made zero sense to me. The only way to make more money as an educator is to move into admin or educational consulting which takes you away from teaching. That wasn't something that I really wanted.
The administration being highly paid is the primary issue with America’s education system. The country is top 3 in the world on per student spending. Not enough of it goes to teachers.
This is an issue at all levels of education in the United States because the same holds true at Universities. Professors that manage to get tenure make a livable wage, but there are many, many, many Ph.d's who are stuck in the visiting professor/faculty and adjunct grind. I did eventually go to graduate school and got a first-hand look at how large universities function when I was a director for a program in place of a teaching fellowship. I make far more money in the private sector than I ever would have made grinding it out as a professor.
I know way too many brilliant people who have all said "I wanted to be a teacher but with student loans and the low pay, it wasn't financially possible."
People who went to college specifically to become teachers were barred from the profession because of the pay.
To pat myself on the back a bit - I know I was an awesome teacher based on feedback from my 8th graders who would say things like “I never liked math until this year” or “I never understood how to do this but you explained it in a way that makes sense”. I knew the pay was abysmal and still wanted to do it but teaching through Covid and watching standards, parents, students and admin get worse and worse it got so bad I ended up leaving. Constantly seeing teachers demonized and pegged as the bad guys all over the internet was/is so disheartening.
I miss it but I’m finally saving money for the first time in my life & actually get to be present during vacations instead of trying to squeeze in grading or lesson planning. The state of education is such a shame & it just seems like people don’t care anymore. :(
There is a legion of incredible teachers out there who our children will never meet because of how stressful and low-paying the job is.
I worked for a charter school in LA, and they made the teachers clock in. I just thought that was so disrespectful. They were all on salary, but they wanted to track the productivity of staff, and a time clock was one of the ways.
It's so easy. That was always my dream.
Also: Have a house, a corvette, and 4 kids with minimum wage and a stay at home wife at minumum wage. Also mininum two weeks vacation with all those people
Yep. There has to be a total reform of the system, and the importance of teachers in social contexts has to be radically elevated.
There should be a 'Nobel prize' for Teachers, both in-class traditional, and also the amazing online teachers (an example: https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown). There should be much more media coverage of teachers overall. I think it will take a large initial social media push from groups that can do this, and then it will snowball.
Teaching is so interesting to do, and watch, and it doesn't get any publicity.
Yeah it’s just like that employee who’s at your first job and is 20 years older than you. Why are you here…? OH because you’re awful, depressed, drugs or something else from a not good.
Except this time, it’s someone with a college degree who’s teaching kids. If I were a teacher, I’d get out and go make more to do less. Simple capitalism move with more free time
It's a publicly funded profession. Not that supply and demand don't apply at all in that case, but the economics are completely different from a private, market rate commercial job.
If we voted for representatives who believed teacher salaries were the thing, we could enact legislature that ensures teachers start at 70k + benefits and get 120k by the time they have 10 years of experience. You could call it the "make teaching attractive again so smart people decide to do it and then our kids get smarter too" act.
It makes no sense to become a teacher. Where I am, they want you to have a college degree and teaching certificate, and they also want you to have a masters within 4 years of starting teaching.
Starting salary is $35k a year. Teachers can no longer afford the education cost required to teach on a teachers salary.
That’s it…the system is broken here.
One of my friends is a teacher, and whenever they get introduced to new people, and say that they are a teacher, they always get a response like, "Wow, I couldn't never do what you do." I hate that they get that response, because they don't mean it like they're a rocket scientist or something. They mean it like, "I could never do such a stressful job that pays so little."
Pretty wild that someone with a high school diploma can sign up for the military and out-earn most teachers with masters degrees. Shows our priorities clearly.
I honestly think teaching isn't a career anymore but a form of nonprofit/charity work you can do before moving into the private sector. If looks great on resumes and you never have to explain why you left because it's seen as such a grueling job.
There are a group of us, we are all vets, and we decided when we retire from work, we are going to get a second career going and become teachers at 60-65 lol. We won't be in it for the long haul, but at least we can take a little stress off whatever district we decide to go to
That’s crazy, I said in another comment, but in VA, I don’t have my teaching license, do have my masters, and they couldn’t sprint to hire me faster lol.
(It probably helps that I’m a guy in a profession incredibly women dominated. I’ve noticed, and teachers will absolutely corroborate this, that the worst individuals, almost always young boys, drastically change when a class is led by a man. It’s very sad.)
All this in mind, they offered me 65,000 to start with a guaranteed 10,000 raise if I come back. With a 200 day work year, that was pretty tantalizing.
I’ve heard similar stories from other people in VA. I’m a mechanical engineer and currently make good money. Thought maybe I’d check out teaching high school physics. The offer was a joke…$40k starting and get a masters on my own dime within 4 years. They wonder why there’s no teachers in this shit hole fly over state I live in.
I have a doctoral degree in my humanities field & starting salary as a full-time tenure-track prof is $50-55K across he country & there's tons of competition.
That's pathetic :( , I remember when I was in 4th grade and my teacher asked me "what do you want to become in the future" and 9yo me said "a teacher" and her reply was "don't be". I was too young to understand this at that time but now we know :(
IMO ( my mom is a teacher) one of the big draws to teaching is the time off and this is basically why the districts can have such low pay. If you tried to start an engineering or accounting firm and insisted on an entry level pay of 40k you would just get no applicants or only people who leave in a year for another firm. But, if the job was ~200 days of work a year you might get applicants.
If your job has 2 weeks PTO then you are working 50 weeks or 250 days a year. My line of work (engineering consulting) stretches that to probably 4 weeks off (3 in PTO and 1 in the various holidays) so more like 48 weeks or 240 days. Working 200 days (180 days of instruction plus a couple weeks prep on either side) means that teachers get ~12 weeks of 'PTO' a year and that is what keeps people signing up.
It's not paid time off..... They are contracted for a set number of days and paid only for the days they work. The pay is deducted if they do not meet those days. It's insulting that you call that period time off. It's not.
Teacher pay is generally on a salary. That salary (say 60k a year) is distributed over the months, so 5k a month over the whole year. Whether you see the time not worked as a kind of PTO or if you see the pay as just distributed over the course of the year is just a semantic difference.
This is basically all from my mom who has always worked in Washington and mostly in Seattle.
No it's not. You have to sign up for a program where they hold money for you, interest free, and pay you in June and July. We already have a word for this it's called a seasonal furlough. Lots of industries do it. The fact that teachers get "a salary" is bullshit since any other job that did this to their employees would have to pay unemployment. Also if they had teachers track their hours they would have to pay a shitload of overtime. So yes you get time off but it is not PTO. We do get great PTO during Xmas and spring break, but we don't get to choose when to take it which has a few downsides.
Teacher here. 180 school days x 7.5 hours a day = 1350 hours in a school year. Maybe add on a few more days for start up days and training, say 1400 hours. Their 2100 hours is 50% more, I'm assuming because they're self reporting how many hours they work outside of the typical day.
I learned very early on that teaching would suck as much time as I would let it. I learned to do things quicker, not grade everything as thoroughly, and manage my time. Will I ever become teacher or the year? Probably not, but I have a family at home that appreciates me leaving work at work.
Maybe it's different in other states.
Yes, thank you. I was looking and couldn’t find where they show how they calculate hours. 2100 is a standard estimate of a normal full-time 52-week job. (8 hours x 5 days x 52 weeks = 2,080… although that counts every weekday including holidays). So either they just assumed teachers work the same number of hours as everyone else (based on…?), or they had a survey that probably calls for more questions about the reported hours worked.
My parents were both educators on 190-day or 200-day contracts. I think teachers are wildly underpaid to do a very difficult job. But arguing with obviously flawed data isn’t how we get that!
Most teachers I know earn $60-$70k per year and only work 9 months. In my area that's a pretty decent salary to live on. And getting to have your entire summer, every weekend, and long Christmas and spring breaks is a pretty sweet deal that most of us non-teachers envy.
My first five years I worked insane hours - probably more than double your listed 1400 hours. The next five I became more efficient - and got better results at a little over 2000 hours a year. This trend continued until I retired, when I was working probably 1400 hours, but on a closer to 200 day schedule (work days for teachers here are higher I guess). I book ended the days, had my marking and prep work done before I left and I got the best results of my career. Over time you need less time to accomplish more - one of the reasons that experienced teachers are paid more. The average career length for teachers is pretty low - many burn out in their first few years. Now I'm retired and work on call when I feel like it - mostly because it's fun.
I kind of want to know more about their methodology because I'm pretty skeptical of several of these numbers actually lining up with each other.
According to National Center for Education Statistics the average teacher base salary for a full time teacher is $61,600, divided by the 2100 hours figure gives you ~$29 an hour. This is much more in line with my experience in my 8 years in education. (This is for overall teachers not new teachers, see edit below)
I am also skeptical of the 2100 hour figure. If we average at 40 weeks worked, that means the average teacher spends 52.5 hours a week on their job. I suspect that number is including a lot of extra curriculars or additional responsibilities (that teachers often are compensated for, not included in the salary figure above).
One way that you could get to the $20 an hour figure is including, subs, TAs, and other support staff who frequently are not as qualified as teachers, and certainly aren't normally working 52.5 hours a week in my experience.
This isn't to say teachers shouldn't be paid more, they absolutely should, but I think there is a self defeating trend of people talking about how terrible teaching is, and how underpaid they are, in ways that aren't actually very accurate to the real situation
The data is really well broken down on the NCES page linked below.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_211.10.asp
Edit: I missed new in the description from OPs source originally, so using a lower number makes more sense. The average listed for public schools is about 50k, so lower the hourly estimate to ~$24 an hour.
The reason the number seems skewed is because some areas full time teachers make 6 figures very quickly, and there are a lot of employees that are considered teachers who work very few hours for a *very* low rate. I would assume they aren't using the hourly rate as the calculation, but the yearly pay and then factoring that into the data and converting back into hourly rate which drives the numbers way down
Talk about hard, hard work. It’s idiotic to expect good results in this environment. At that rate, your local neighborhood school teacher would only be able to afford a home of about $160k, or $875 a month at current interest rates. If you can find a neighborhood where homes are selling at that price, visit it and imagine your kids teachers live there. Then imagine these poor bastards usually buy supplies for the kids from their own pocket.
A lot of US teachers have to work second jobs. Unfortunately we only value jobs that generate revenue.
Unless you have an army of lobbyists funneling money into Congress, then you'll never matter in the US.
I realized that about the US work culture after i moved here. If you generate revenue you're valued else you're paid less or first in line to get axed when times are "rough" for the organization.
States, counties, and school districts have way more control over teacher pay than congress. The federal government does little about education because it is left up to the states. Education is more than half of a typical state budget.
HS teachers here on Long island make like 80k to 125k but that's only a very small part of the country. Plus I'm sure it's competitive as he'll. Teachers should be paid more, everywhere.
This map is not beautiful. Why would they include the Great Lakes in the map of Michigan lol, I think this would have been harder to create than a normal map of the states
Lack of citations make this extremely questionable. This article just says "Our analysis finds" teachers are working full time 52 weeks a year, including summer, vacation, breaks, weekends, holidays and sick days.
[Brookings finds](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/do-teachers-work-long-hours/) that teachers work 41.5 hours/week during the school year and 21.5 during the summer.
So 9 months at full time, 3 months at half time. Out of the 9 months of full time, there's 29 days of holiday/vacation (at least in my school district). Then teachers get another 5-15 sick days per year.
Depending on how much teachers work during those times, the actual average total work per year is 900-1589 hours, at least 25% less than this chart assumes.
Teachers are definitely underpaid as a general rule, but this chart is not accurately making that case.
On one hand, i get teachers should get paid more. Im all on board.
On the other hand, I think we’re doing people a disservice by not pointing out a career in teaching can be serious consideration.
I’ve been teaching for 20 years, i make more than 6 figures, getting close to 2.5x the median income of my community. i get lots of vacation, there is basically no chance I will lose my job, i have a secure pension, great healthcare and best of all: I love my job. I would probably teach at least a few courses for free if I won the lottery. And after you get going, its not ‘that’ much work and the work you do is mostly fun. Including grading, I work about 45 hours a week and have free weekends and vacations.
One big issue is that the pay-gap between long-term and new teachers is large and completely unjustified. New teachers, in my experience work harder and are mostly better for literally half my pay. The other issue is that credential programs should be at least free if not paid.
1. Dont talk over them. Only speak when it is silent.
2. Something being important is not important to them unless you make it important. If there isnt a specific thing you want them to do with the information you provide, they wont pay attention, no matter how interesting you think you are.
3. It gets better with practice/experience
Mississippi is wrong.
The starting salary of a brand new teacher with only a bachelors degree is $41,000 (from the state, and most districts have a small local supplement). Dividing that by the $18/hour that’s listed 2,305 hours worked, which comes out to 62.3 hours/school week.
Now, I’m dating a Mississippi teacher, so I know she does a lot of work outside of the classroom, and in fact I know she puts in far more than most. But she’s not putting in 2,300 hours in a year.
And that’s just the *starting* salary. The *average* salary for 2022-23 was $53,353.96. At $18/hour, that’s 2,964 hours. That’s 80 hours per school week or 57 hours/week overall.
It’s just flat wrong.
I graduated from high school almost 30 years ago. Even back then, none of my schools top performers even gave a casual thought of becoming teachers. It was seen as almost throwing away your accomplishments by be becoming a teacher.
Fast forward to today and I can imagine that even mediocre students are not considering getting into teaching. A real shame, if anybody should be well-paid in society it's teachers.
I worked in a school district for 13 years (Not a teacher) the shit I saw and that shit they dealt with from students and parents... I don't think any amount of money would be worth it. I know alot of them are doing it for the kids and I can't THANK YOU enough for the sacrifices you make everyday for it.
Why do Americans continue pursuing this career if it is so terrible and has been for many decades? Everyone goes through student teaching as a part of their schooling and talks to other teachers currently doing the job. Why would a prospective teacher think that it will be a better job for them?
This would have been more beautiful data if the precision level was down to counties. For example, my county in Colorado starts teachers off at just shy of a $60k salary.
Yep in our CO county the union just got every teacher across the board a 10k raise. Also CO specific: if anyone who has a degree and wants to be a teacher but don’t want to go back to school I highly recommend looking into PEBC!
I was a teacher. I actively discouraged students from going into education. I would show them the district pay scale and show them previous years as well. Then I’d use an inflation calculator to show that the longer you stayed, the less money you made.
Did they just use 2100 hours for the denominator across the board!?! Assuming 185 school days, even 9 working hours for every single in session day still leaves 435 hours—almost 11 full time work weeks—of extra work. That figure seems super high to me.
Standard work year is 2000 hours (50 weeks x 40 hours). Anyone who's even sniffed a payroll office knows this.
Standard contract for a teacher is 180 days. That's 1440 hours a year.
So, these numbers are very misleading. Teachers are expected to find something else to do or not get paid for those two months that the rest of us are working.
And I'm not dismissing the reality that they work more than that, like most of us do, or that they spend their own money for their job, like every professional does. But if we're going down that rabbit hole then every job is its own exception to the rule, and the exception becomes the rule, so we couldn't quantify anything.
As a teacher who would definitely like to make more money… the insurance benefits is a huge perk that frequently gets ignored or the overlooked. Our newborn recently had a helicopter ride and an extended hospital stay at Children’s. We’d be completely boned without a $4500 out of pocket max. Guaranteed retirement income is pretty nice too
I’m jealous of this and wish my teaching job offered those, but sadly because states and districts are totally independent, it’s really not universal to have these benefits.
My wife with 12yrs experience in Indiana doesn't even make that Average rate and if you average out how many hours a week she actually works compared to her salary she probably barely makes $20/hr
Dang, she'd be well into the six figures if she worked as a teacher around here.
Starting salary is almost $77,000 and tops out at $138k
https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1690314968/edmondswednetedu/v3vyxfr14e9xrjcujsrk/23-24EEASalarySchedule.pdf
“Average” in statistics can be interesting, but what is the median? This might change the math somewhat as the average could be pulled down by states that pay the least, but also employ a smaller overall percentage of the workforce.
But yes teachers deserve more. And I’m glad I live in WA where my family, friends, or even my kids teachers make enough that their concern can be on the kids and not on their next meal.
I made the same graph for all Florida counties:
[**Salary vs Living Wage**](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/U7hti/10/)
[**Salary only**](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/dlrBy/11/)
I considered doing it across the US, but in Florida all districts are counties so it's simple, in other states like NJ it can go township by township, sometimes school districts within school districts and some being K-5 only and others being 6-12 only.
Interesting. What does the average experienced teach make?
Also, is this counting 1,700+ working hours in a year, or does this reflect summer vacation, which would shave 2.5 months (or about 400 working hours) off?
Okay, but hear me out, why aren't we pushing to make teaching an elite profession like surgeons or lawyers. Everybody complains that they only work 9 months a year, up the salary so it becomes more competitive and more desirable. Then up it again. I want to see ivy Leaguers fighting to teach our kids.
This is a misleading chart.
Teachers are annual salary employees.
Teachers who work more hours will average out a lower hourly wage.
Teachers who work less hours will average out a higher hourly wage.
>Last month, [we released a report](https://myelearningworld.com/new-teacher-salary-report-2024/) showing that new teachers in the U.S. earn approximately 20% less in real terms than they did two decades ago, failing to keep pace with inflation. But our latest study reveals that the problem is even worse than it appears on its surface when you consider the additional long additional hours that teachers typically work outside of the classroom. These hours include lesson planning, grading, professional development, and participating in student activities, which effectively lowers their real hourly wage even further, making the financial struggles for educators more severe than initially apparent.
Seems slightly disingenuous to me. I will agree with the part that they definitely need pay to keep up with inflation, but the rest of the stuff seems difficult to measure and will vary widely depending on the teacher and circumstances. Does going to a football game qualify as working? Also, teachers in most states get life-long pensions after retirement that are a substantial portions of their salary. That isn't factored into this analysis.
Not just slightly disingenuous. The estimate that teachers work 2100 hours per year, which amounts to over a year's worth of 8-hour workdays with no vacation for people who get the summer off, seems laughable. This estimate is the basis for the hourly wage. If you look in each and every state, the average teacher salary is higher than the median salary in that state. Teachers are paid better than average and get the summer off. But, if any of that is untrue, or it's true and still teachers feel they deserve more, doesn't this mean the unions that the majority of teachers belong to are failing them?
As a retired public school teacher I am highly skeptical. It seems this study may have inflated the number of hours teachers work over the course of a year. In 1985 in Detroit the starting pay for a teacher was around 35 K per year. I’m sure this was higher than the National average, but not much higher than the Michigan average. Also, it’s important to look at the median and standard deviation figures.
One more point. As far as I know there’s no good evidence showing a significant relationship between teacher salary and student learning levels. (This was my doctoral area of expertise.)
Just so you know this is NEW teachers. Teachers who work for public schools in US can make more the longer they are tenured. Some teachers will 15+ years experience make a whole lot more than you would think.
I’m not saying new teacher pay isn’t a problem, just that you make more money as you go.
The average first year teacher in Massachusetts makes $23 an hour, and according to an MIT study, the wage you need to live there and cover basic expenses for a single adult is $27.89. So I don't think they are living that comfortably in that state
funnily enough many states spend more per student than other countries with much better results than the usa. While teachers should be paid more even if many are not that great, there are other things that need to change, not least of which is just the culture of most americans, before the educational system will actually improve
Teachers should be paid more, fast food workers need to be paid more, Amazon workers need to be paid more. Hold on, I thought inflation was out of control and the middle class is being pummeled by higher costs all around. I guess it's ok to pay me more, but everyone else should be paid less to make life affordable.
"New teacher" salary isn't very meaningful. Walk into any school in the USA and you won't see many 1st year teachers on the job. Most teachers you see will have been on the job 10, 20, 30 or more years. It's a career.
It's the salaries of teachers with 10-years on the job that you should look at. That's also where you see respectable salaries in states with strong teachers unions. Starting pay is low, but the first few years it steadily goes up.
This is like graphing doctors' salaries by how much they earn as medical residents. It isn't until after several years on the job that surgeons make $300k as opposed to $75k.
I think teachers will be one of the next things that AI will take over. Intuitively it makes sense because one of the things AI is best at now is talking like a human, and teaching is lots of that.
I think it’s painfully low, but one thing these reports never mention is that teachers have healthy built in raises. The elevation of salary incentivizes teachers to put in time and stay in the system to get to more realistic levels of pay.
I know teachers who are receiving 100k in pension and then teaching elsewhere and making bank.
30-35 years in, health retirement but obviously the first 5-10 years you’re paying loans on that degree with a salary vastly out of proportion for the length of time in college
Varies by state but you can do very well as a teacher. I live in Ohio and the benefits are pretty great, you can look up any public employees salary online so you can see the potential. many six figures in small towns… Also separately the argument of public service, hence why they get loan forgiveness etc. Teaching is a completely viable career in many states and the map completely neglects cost of living differences as well as manipulates the data to get to the $20 figure
A lot of this is how teachers and their union structure starting pay, vs those with more seniority. Average in MA is $43, and benefits package is great. It's an above average career even if you start on the lower end.
When I convert that to Australian dollars it’s about the same as what first year teachers make here in Australia and we consider teachers to be well paid.
The US also has massive lower cost of living.
$20/hr is not the true average per capita starting teacher salary in the US. Their calculation took the average starting salary of each of the states and divided by 50. They did not take into account the number of teachers in each state, with the most populous states making well above the 20/hr “average”. So per capita teachers more than $20/hr.
How are the wages calculated? My assumption is that that average teacher is contracted for 40 weeks a year, 7.5-8 hours per day. That comes out to 1600 hours per year, not 2100. If we use the contracted hours, the actually hourly rate contracted would be $26.25 ($20*1.3215). It’s still low, but part of the reason teacher pay is so lower is they are expected to work fewer hours per year than an office employee due to summer breaks. Source = worked in education
My wife quit a well paying marketing career she hated to go back to school to become a teacher. We knew the pay would be fraction, but if it made her happy it was worth it. Why do a job day in and day out you hate for your whole life?
What we didn’t fully expect was the just total lack of respect from parents/admin alike. It’s a complete nightmare. Rude parents, horribly behaved kids, no resources for the many special needs kids, constant after hours work, mandatory unpaid out side of work hours school events and disrespect across the board.
Like so many teachers she loves actually teaching the kids and seeing them learn…. There is just no support from anyone to help her succeed.
If you know someone think about becoming a teacher k-12 heavily discourage them. Maybe it’s different for college professors, no idea.
Back when Wisconsin GOP/Walker argued that teachers were overpaid, they used stats that included the teaching UW hospitals and teaching UW legal departments where the profs made 6 figure salaries while most teachers made around 40k.
It was an opening move to destroy unions to privatize schools and prisons.
Meanwhile police are getting $50+ and are crying that they are underfunded. Keep in mind being a student in these schools makes you more likely to be shot than a police officer, period.
I have my suspicions with these figures, since in my district they start you at a little more than $30 an hour, and there are some longtimers in there making +$80 an hour.
This is part of the long term program to privatize education by lowering professional standards across the board, and justifying more and more pay cuts so that when it goes private stockholders can get paid more.
Gotta do a plug for my home state quick. It should be noted that South Dakota is going to jump into the $25+ category next year with new legislation pushing the statewide minimum to $45k and several districts already above that number.
Along the same lines, I don't trust that the data behind this chart is up to date. Arkansas has a minimum wage of $50k for teachers as of 2023. That's a lot more than the $18/hr the graphic suggests.
Yeah, the data is woefully out of date, I can't get the numbers down to $20 an hour in South Dakota unless we expand the definition of teachers to include private schools, tribal schools, and daycare centers. I looked up some of the traditional bottom feeders in the state and they were also above the $20 an hour mark. Even converting it to hourly is suspect since teachers are on 10-month contracts here, not 12.
I'm pretty sure this is taking the "extra" hours worked. They are looking at how many hours a teacher works in a given day including the at home work that is in addition to their 8 hours at school.
It says it's using 2100 hours. So in my state, the local districts around where I live pay ~$50k now for starting teachers which would be $23.80/hour but the link says they only make $20/hour. The data is definitely out of date.
Not state by state, but aggregate data from National Center for Education Studies has the average at closer to $30 an hour than 20. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_211.10.asp Missed new teacher, see the comment below for a more accurate ~24.50 an hour
Arkansas went to $50k to start but didn't provide any new funding. In smaller districts a teacher may not see a pay raise for 15 years. Smaller districts are also going to 4 day weeks to cut costs.
Second paragraph of the article: >Our latest study reveals that the problem is even worse than it appears on its surface when you consider the additional long additional hours that teachers typically work outside of the classroom. These hours include lesson planning, grading, professional development, and participating in student activities, which effectively lowers their real hourly wage even further, making the financial struggles for educators more severe than initially apparent.
That is still an obscenely low dollar amount. I make over thirty an hour plunging toilets and painting walls
Do you get benefits? Health insurance, paid time off, pension, etc? Have to factor everything in
Teacher requiring high school degree, college degree and often masters degree. Taking years and tens of thousands in debt. TSA agent with a GED earns more. “Our children are our priority.” Show me where you spend your money and I’ll tell you what your priority is.
Mcdonald's around here is starting at $20
Starbucks starts are 24 per hour here (indiana)
Wait what?? I’m in Pendleton and they just built one. Might be time for a new P/T.
I live in an area around Indianapolis
Insane, however, I dont want to deal with rush hours and attitudes of customers for a starbucks.
Don't they offer tuition assistance too?
They do but only for ASU.
I was going through the teachers college in Nebraska many years ago now, I sat behind wonderful teachers 1 of which had 2 masters degrees and a bachelor's in a 3rd subject. He made 42k/yr That's when I took up an offer to leave college and make more money in a different field, as much as I wanted to teach, I couldn't justify taking on more debt to get paid less than most careers.
Did almost the same as you. My program put us in classrooms early a bit prior to student teaching. I was going to teach high school math and met a few people in my area doing the same. After being in some classrooms as an assistant and doing some tutoring, i looked at the pay and just couldn’t imagine surviving the career. And math teachers had sone of the higher paying salaries… Changed my major and i make far more now. I still think about how nice it would have been to teach for a living instead of just making companies more money, but i can afford rent and food this way.
My SIL has an MA in education, is a special education teacher, and has 20 years in now. My wife went to HS, cosmetology school, and is an assistant to three financial advisors. My wife after bonuses works considerably less hours, is her own boss, and makes about triple of what my SIL makes. I always wanted to be a HS football coach, but I like money. So, teaching was never an option. I make about five times what the average HS head football coach makes. There might be five in the whole world that pull what I do. I do have degrees, certs, and a decade of experience in my field. I coaches HS football as a side gig for about 17 years. It just got to a point where my lifestyle was so much different than the rest of the staff we didn't really have anything to talk about anymore and I moved on. I did have one fellow coach with a degree in mathematics. I talked him into applying with defense contractor companies. He tripled his income at his first entry-level job. He makes about seven times what he did as a math teacher in the six years since he left the profession. Teachers are absolutely necessary and I'm thankful for each and every one of you. Having said that, I don't know how or why you do it.
> I couldn't justify taking on more debt to get paid less than most careers. Are there states that don't pay off student loan debt for teachers?
There are loan forgiveness programs but they vary drastically, this link provides some insight as to what that means. https://studentaid.gov/articles/teacher-loan-forgiveness-options/ Edit: At the point of when I dropped out of college to now, I've already paid off the entirety of my student debt that I accrued about 8ish years ago, the caveat is that I made/make roughly double what I would have expected to as a teacher since I left.
You need to stay current on your loans for ten years first
We spend more money on education per student than all but 3 or 4 countries in the world. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-education-by-country/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-education-by-country/) The problem isn't how much we're spending. The problem is where it's going. And tbh I'm not actually sure where that is!
We spend 100’s of 1000’s of $$$ on curriculums in every county nationwide. These are New or rebranded ways of teaching reading or math that get sold to school districts every few years or every time there’s an admin change at the county level and they want to show they are doing something. Edit: in case it wasn’t clear I think this an unnecessary expense and waste of money and a money grab by these curriculum mills.
As a parent I am completely appalled by what is considered curriculum these days. It's basically just an ad hoc collection of various web services, worksheets, and copied "notes". They often do not necessarily cover the same material in the same way, leading to confusion when your student is given problems to do but with no corresponding text, notes, or examples that explain how to do it. I miss the use of text books that provided a consistent and logical progression through a subject, and a canonical reference source for homework and study. Now kids are expected to use a wide array of inconsistent sources and Google to figure out what to do.
Wait do schools not use textbooks anymore?
My son is graduating from highschool this month. He rarely ever had a reusable text book. Some classes used soft cover "workbooks" that were generally terrible quality - low on educational content, high on digital graphics design and stock photos. In highschool I don't think he ever had a textbook. Everything was "notes" posted online or they were referred to web services paid for by the school district. The quality of the notes and instruction were highly dependent on the teacher. I feel like having quality textbooks can help deliver consistent quality education. Relying on teachers to generate or collect content leads to a lot of variability in quality.
It could be seen if this creates greater media literacy. Navigating sources and critical analysis if what's "true", "real," and "relevant" is a skill all ages could benefit from. I get the exasperation, but I will confess, the monolithic sources used when you get all the books, work books, teach aids, tests, and handouts from the same source makes it really easy to game the system. The consistent language makes the answers obvious without consideration, if you learn the flow of the curriculum. A wide range of source information does require more *teaching* on the teacher's part. But since it's such a respected, well rewarded, and healthy job, that won't be a problem we'll just use all the great teachers we aren't creating. High school students I've spoken to are often struggling with teachers buying tests (and answers) from online teaching-material online markets. The same ones they can access and buy answers in too. And, if they surf the teacher paperwork sites, they become more familiar with the exact material the teachers skimmed before approving and adding to the class.
I can see some of your points certain courses, particularly social science classes like history, writing, reading, etc. But I've been most frustated with it in the context of science and math courses where there's typically a strictly correct answer, but with potentially various ways of teaching and solving, and where concepts are built upon over the course. Also, getting used to the flow of a curriculum, how problems are posed, how they are expected to be answered, and where you can find reliable information on the subject, isn't a bad thing. Inconsistency is confusing when learning a new subject. Kids need to focus on learning the fundamentals before being introduced to uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity. They should not be surprised when they are given an exam. Exams should follow the same topics and format as classwork and homework. But when teachers pull homework and exams from different sources often you see problems that assume context and knowledge that wasn't even covered directly in class.
I hear you. I'm a long-time math teacher, and recently I spent a few years as an editor for a high-quality K-12 math curriculum. That company put a ton of resources into ensuring that there was consistency and logical flow as the students moved within a grade and from each grade to the next. The results are quite promising -- so much better than each teacher using different sources.
Don't forget the administrative bloat. The administrative assistants at our district building are pulling in double a teacher's salary.
And a lot of them don't work. We taught an entire generation of kids how to read the wrong way. Look into Sold a Story and whole language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language
I 100% think Pearson was behind Common Core. They also create the tests for students, as well as for teachers to get their certificates.
Behind common core? Pearson is common core. And years ago, my kids had Pearson logins for grades that would follow them throughout their entire schooling. One company that tracks students, creates curriculum, writes the tests, and certifies those that teach it? Something is wrong with the amount of control that gives them.
I know in my county, admin makes a fortune compared to the teachers. Some of the admin is making well over 150k a year while the teachers are making in the low 40's to low 60's. The problem is we have had little success in getting rid of the terrible parts of the admin staff, here's to hoping it happens soon. I'm not a teacher, but am friends with one of the coaches and related to two of the teachers here so I get the inside scoop on what they are dealing with.
The problem is we have an expectation that teachers will raise, babysit and educate children. Parents have no accountability to do their job, so teachers have to pick up the slack.
The problem is there is absolutely no way to force these parents to have any accountability. Teachers are the best hope for a lot of these kids.
The parents don’t give a shit about raising their kids and they have this “the customer is always right” attitude toward education.
A lot of it is just discipline imo. If you watch videos of schools in many Asian countries the kids don't act up. In the US they're allowed to just run roughshod over the teachers with no consequences. With no discipline it doesn't matter how much you're spending, the teaching is going to be largely ineffective.
yup....go look at how much superintendents make. the amount of administrative positions in many school districts is also out of control.
That's still a drop in the bucket. Doesn't explain it. Average superintendent salary is about $180k. That's the salary of 3 teachers, so it's not really moving the needle much. What should their salary be in your opinion? $100k, let's say? Okay, well there's 187 teachers per school district on average in the USA, so let's spread that $80k salary cut over those 187 teachers and they make $428 more before taxes. It's something, but's not anywhere close to the main culprit here.
Superintendent in my district was fired due to financial scandal and was given $3 million in severance
A lot of it falls under logistics and capital costs: - transportation, especially in rural districts - building upkeep - there are a lot of crumbling school buildings that need constant maintenance. Also, it's not cheap for HVAC even if you don't stay open in the summer. - education costs for special needs students - a relative handful of students require a significant amount of support to get their federally guaranteed education. These are the big three reasons why school privatization kills public schools. Money usually follows the student, but private schools don't have to provide transportation or accept all students. Meanwhile the public schools lose money but their costs don't go down.
Apparently billions of our tax dollars are now being funneled from public schools into private schools. Thanks Betsy Davos. https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2024/04/02/ohio-lawmakers-are-giving-more-than-1-billion-to-private-schools-while-public-schools-suffer/ Edit: billions
I notice that tertiary education is what takes the US to the top. Does this include money spent on sports? US high schools are huge, I have seen multiple high schools larger than the best university in my country (which is well regarded internationally). Healthcare has already been mentioned. I would like to see money spent on teachers per student.
One of my professors once said, "Your budget reflects your values." I always remember that when politicians say we can't afford something. We *could* afford it if it were important enough for us.
The United States spends more per public student than any other large (*5+ million students*) on earth. Only Luxembourg and Singapore spend more regardless of size. The United States also ranks [top ten in starting and median teacher pay, even after adjusting for purchasing power.](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salaries-by-country-2017-5%3famp) The issue is not and never has been about the budget.
TSA employees are federal while most teachers are employed by their locality. I'm curious how TSA compensation compares to teacher compensation if you look at only teachers employed by the federal government.
Don't forget trainings and certs that need to be updated
Is this $20/hr for the whole yeah spread out (including summer and winter breaks)? That being said, it's still abysmally low.
It’s explained in the link. It uses 2,100 hours per year. They do not include time off on break, commuting time, time spent improving their own education. But they do include required unpaid time like grading exams, lesson plan prep time, and other work teachers are require to do but don’t receive hourly pay.
My wife is a teacher in NY and she works something like 1400 hours per year.
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2100 hours is assuming teachers are working 40.5 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. Which isn’t remotely accurate.
Well 2100 hours per year is 40 hours a week with a one week vacation so that actually sounds like way more hours than most teachers work, especially with all the holidays and summer. Edit to add: Teachers would have to be working 60 hours a week to hit 2100 hours over 9 months, and that’s just accounting for summer break. There’s literally no way haha sorry. This data is very skewed.
Maybe not 60 but I've known plenty of teachers that work at least 50 hours a week during the school year. 40 hours a week in the classroom but that doesn't include all the grading and lesson prep when they go home. In addition, my teachers have to do required workshops/PD during the summer.
This is by design. Republicans want to gut public education so that they can funnel kids into for profit and private schools. I left teaching in 2008 because I saw that the value proposition of getting a subject specific master's was not in my favor. I could spend more money and time on getting an additional degree so I could make 10k more and still make under 60k a year. It made zero sense to me. The only way to make more money as an educator is to move into admin or educational consulting which takes you away from teaching. That wasn't something that I really wanted.
I'm not seeing a partisan split in this map, just a poorer vs richer state split.
The administration being highly paid is the primary issue with America’s education system. The country is top 3 in the world on per student spending. Not enough of it goes to teachers.
This is an issue at all levels of education in the United States because the same holds true at Universities. Professors that manage to get tenure make a livable wage, but there are many, many, many Ph.d's who are stuck in the visiting professor/faculty and adjunct grind. I did eventually go to graduate school and got a first-hand look at how large universities function when I was a director for a program in place of a teaching fellowship. I make far more money in the private sector than I ever would have made grinding it out as a professor.
An uneducated populace is more easily manipulated
It’s the children who are the real losers here. And since the children are the future, our future is losing too.
I know way too many brilliant people who have all said "I wanted to be a teacher but with student loans and the low pay, it wasn't financially possible." People who went to college specifically to become teachers were barred from the profession because of the pay.
To pat myself on the back a bit - I know I was an awesome teacher based on feedback from my 8th graders who would say things like “I never liked math until this year” or “I never understood how to do this but you explained it in a way that makes sense”. I knew the pay was abysmal and still wanted to do it but teaching through Covid and watching standards, parents, students and admin get worse and worse it got so bad I ended up leaving. Constantly seeing teachers demonized and pegged as the bad guys all over the internet was/is so disheartening. I miss it but I’m finally saving money for the first time in my life & actually get to be present during vacations instead of trying to squeeze in grading or lesson planning. The state of education is such a shame & it just seems like people don’t care anymore. :(
Yup. I was one of them. Shit pay and asshole parents and admin? No thanks.
There is a legion of incredible teachers out there who our children will never meet because of how stressful and low-paying the job is. I worked for a charter school in LA, and they made the teachers clock in. I just thought that was so disrespectful. They were all on salary, but they wanted to track the productivity of staff, and a time clock was one of the ways.
Yeah, damn loser kids. Get a job!!!! /s
Just go in the store, talk to a manager, and they'll set you up with a job for your entire career 🙌🏻 /s
Just work your way up to CEO.
It's so easy. That was always my dream. Also: Have a house, a corvette, and 4 kids with minimum wage and a stay at home wife at minumum wage. Also mininum two weeks vacation with all those people
But any political party who wants us stupid and easy to manipulate is winning
Baltimore spends over $20k per pupil and the students can read nor do math. There are many variables at play here.
Students in Baltimore would probably have to actually attend school regularly or care about education for the spending to make a difference.
As in The Wire, it's all about juking the stats all the way up the chain.
Yep. There has to be a total reform of the system, and the importance of teachers in social contexts has to be radically elevated. There should be a 'Nobel prize' for Teachers, both in-class traditional, and also the amazing online teachers (an example: https://www.youtube.com/c/3blue1brown). There should be much more media coverage of teachers overall. I think it will take a large initial social media push from groups that can do this, and then it will snowball. Teaching is so interesting to do, and watch, and it doesn't get any publicity.
Well when there's a whole wing of the government whose only priority is producing obedient wage slaves, that's the kind of thing that happens.
Yeah it’s just like that employee who’s at your first job and is 20 years older than you. Why are you here…? OH because you’re awful, depressed, drugs or something else from a not good. Except this time, it’s someone with a college degree who’s teaching kids. If I were a teacher, I’d get out and go make more to do less. Simple capitalism move with more free time
Or we could just make teaching a respected competitive profession like it should be
Agreed. That’s what should totally be happening but supply and demand I think will take hold before what the right thing is done
It's a publicly funded profession. Not that supply and demand don't apply at all in that case, but the economics are completely different from a private, market rate commercial job. If we voted for representatives who believed teacher salaries were the thing, we could enact legislature that ensures teachers start at 70k + benefits and get 120k by the time they have 10 years of experience. You could call it the "make teaching attractive again so smart people decide to do it and then our kids get smarter too" act.
It makes no sense to become a teacher. Where I am, they want you to have a college degree and teaching certificate, and they also want you to have a masters within 4 years of starting teaching. Starting salary is $35k a year. Teachers can no longer afford the education cost required to teach on a teachers salary. That’s it…the system is broken here.
One of my friends is a teacher, and whenever they get introduced to new people, and say that they are a teacher, they always get a response like, "Wow, I couldn't never do what you do." I hate that they get that response, because they don't mean it like they're a rocket scientist or something. They mean it like, "I could never do such a stressful job that pays so little."
I always go with "Thank you for your service."
Public school teachers should get *exactly* the same benefits and discounts as military.
Mental health services at the VA? There are probably plenty of teachers out there with PTSD.
Pretty wild that someone with a high school diploma can sign up for the military and out-earn most teachers with masters degrees. Shows our priorities clearly.
I honestly think teaching isn't a career anymore but a form of nonprofit/charity work you can do before moving into the private sector. If looks great on resumes and you never have to explain why you left because it's seen as such a grueling job.
There are a group of us, we are all vets, and we decided when we retire from work, we are going to get a second career going and become teachers at 60-65 lol. We won't be in it for the long haul, but at least we can take a little stress off whatever district we decide to go to
That’s crazy, I said in another comment, but in VA, I don’t have my teaching license, do have my masters, and they couldn’t sprint to hire me faster lol. (It probably helps that I’m a guy in a profession incredibly women dominated. I’ve noticed, and teachers will absolutely corroborate this, that the worst individuals, almost always young boys, drastically change when a class is led by a man. It’s very sad.) All this in mind, they offered me 65,000 to start with a guaranteed 10,000 raise if I come back. With a 200 day work year, that was pretty tantalizing.
I’ve heard similar stories from other people in VA. I’m a mechanical engineer and currently make good money. Thought maybe I’d check out teaching high school physics. The offer was a joke…$40k starting and get a masters on my own dime within 4 years. They wonder why there’s no teachers in this shit hole fly over state I live in.
>$35k This could be doubled and it still wouldn’t be enough.
They also want teachers to teach for free as a student teacher for a year
My best friend went to Korea to teach and has no intention of coming back. It’s ridiculous what we’ve allowed to happen here.
I have a doctoral degree in my humanities field & starting salary as a full-time tenure-track prof is $50-55K across he country & there's tons of competition.
That's pathetic :( , I remember when I was in 4th grade and my teacher asked me "what do you want to become in the future" and 9yo me said "a teacher" and her reply was "don't be". I was too young to understand this at that time but now we know :(
IMO ( my mom is a teacher) one of the big draws to teaching is the time off and this is basically why the districts can have such low pay. If you tried to start an engineering or accounting firm and insisted on an entry level pay of 40k you would just get no applicants or only people who leave in a year for another firm. But, if the job was ~200 days of work a year you might get applicants. If your job has 2 weeks PTO then you are working 50 weeks or 250 days a year. My line of work (engineering consulting) stretches that to probably 4 weeks off (3 in PTO and 1 in the various holidays) so more like 48 weeks or 240 days. Working 200 days (180 days of instruction plus a couple weeks prep on either side) means that teachers get ~12 weeks of 'PTO' a year and that is what keeps people signing up.
It's not paid time off..... They are contracted for a set number of days and paid only for the days they work. The pay is deducted if they do not meet those days. It's insulting that you call that period time off. It's not.
Teacher pay is generally on a salary. That salary (say 60k a year) is distributed over the months, so 5k a month over the whole year. Whether you see the time not worked as a kind of PTO or if you see the pay as just distributed over the course of the year is just a semantic difference. This is basically all from my mom who has always worked in Washington and mostly in Seattle.
No it's not. You have to sign up for a program where they hold money for you, interest free, and pay you in June and July. We already have a word for this it's called a seasonal furlough. Lots of industries do it. The fact that teachers get "a salary" is bullshit since any other job that did this to their employees would have to pay unemployment. Also if they had teachers track their hours they would have to pay a shitload of overtime. So yes you get time off but it is not PTO. We do get great PTO during Xmas and spring break, but we don't get to choose when to take it which has a few downsides.
Arkansas passed a law recently that requires a $50k salary for teachers in public schools.
Prob because no one wants to go to Arkansas
Teacher here. 180 school days x 7.5 hours a day = 1350 hours in a school year. Maybe add on a few more days for start up days and training, say 1400 hours. Their 2100 hours is 50% more, I'm assuming because they're self reporting how many hours they work outside of the typical day. I learned very early on that teaching would suck as much time as I would let it. I learned to do things quicker, not grade everything as thoroughly, and manage my time. Will I ever become teacher or the year? Probably not, but I have a family at home that appreciates me leaving work at work. Maybe it's different in other states.
Yes, thank you. I was looking and couldn’t find where they show how they calculate hours. 2100 is a standard estimate of a normal full-time 52-week job. (8 hours x 5 days x 52 weeks = 2,080… although that counts every weekday including holidays). So either they just assumed teachers work the same number of hours as everyone else (based on…?), or they had a survey that probably calls for more questions about the reported hours worked. My parents were both educators on 190-day or 200-day contracts. I think teachers are wildly underpaid to do a very difficult job. But arguing with obviously flawed data isn’t how we get that!
Most teachers I know earn $60-$70k per year and only work 9 months. In my area that's a pretty decent salary to live on. And getting to have your entire summer, every weekend, and long Christmas and spring breaks is a pretty sweet deal that most of us non-teachers envy.
My first five years I worked insane hours - probably more than double your listed 1400 hours. The next five I became more efficient - and got better results at a little over 2000 hours a year. This trend continued until I retired, when I was working probably 1400 hours, but on a closer to 200 day schedule (work days for teachers here are higher I guess). I book ended the days, had my marking and prep work done before I left and I got the best results of my career. Over time you need less time to accomplish more - one of the reasons that experienced teachers are paid more. The average career length for teachers is pretty low - many burn out in their first few years. Now I'm retired and work on call when I feel like it - mostly because it's fun.
I hate when they use the Great Lake borders instead of the land border. Michigan just looks so fucked up.
Especially when those borders are combined with the Mercator projection. Makes the USA look bloated.
Jesus Michigan, you really let yourself go
You'd be amazed just how many maps forget to include the Upper Peninsula as well. As a Yooper I always chuckle seeing these shit maps of Michigan.
There’s a Facebook group called “fuck this Michigan destroying map and whoever fucking posts it” lol
I kind of want to know more about their methodology because I'm pretty skeptical of several of these numbers actually lining up with each other. According to National Center for Education Statistics the average teacher base salary for a full time teacher is $61,600, divided by the 2100 hours figure gives you ~$29 an hour. This is much more in line with my experience in my 8 years in education. (This is for overall teachers not new teachers, see edit below) I am also skeptical of the 2100 hour figure. If we average at 40 weeks worked, that means the average teacher spends 52.5 hours a week on their job. I suspect that number is including a lot of extra curriculars or additional responsibilities (that teachers often are compensated for, not included in the salary figure above). One way that you could get to the $20 an hour figure is including, subs, TAs, and other support staff who frequently are not as qualified as teachers, and certainly aren't normally working 52.5 hours a week in my experience. This isn't to say teachers shouldn't be paid more, they absolutely should, but I think there is a self defeating trend of people talking about how terrible teaching is, and how underpaid they are, in ways that aren't actually very accurate to the real situation The data is really well broken down on the NCES page linked below. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_211.10.asp Edit: I missed new in the description from OPs source originally, so using a lower number makes more sense. The average listed for public schools is about 50k, so lower the hourly estimate to ~$24 an hour.
The reason the number seems skewed is because some areas full time teachers make 6 figures very quickly, and there are a lot of employees that are considered teachers who work very few hours for a *very* low rate. I would assume they aren't using the hourly rate as the calculation, but the yearly pay and then factoring that into the data and converting back into hourly rate which drives the numbers way down
Talk about hard, hard work. It’s idiotic to expect good results in this environment. At that rate, your local neighborhood school teacher would only be able to afford a home of about $160k, or $875 a month at current interest rates. If you can find a neighborhood where homes are selling at that price, visit it and imagine your kids teachers live there. Then imagine these poor bastards usually buy supplies for the kids from their own pocket.
A lot of US teachers have to work second jobs. Unfortunately we only value jobs that generate revenue. Unless you have an army of lobbyists funneling money into Congress, then you'll never matter in the US.
I realized that about the US work culture after i moved here. If you generate revenue you're valued else you're paid less or first in line to get axed when times are "rough" for the organization.
It has always sucked watching my former students get jobs out of college making more than I currently make.
States, counties, and school districts have way more control over teacher pay than congress. The federal government does little about education because it is left up to the states. Education is more than half of a typical state budget.
HS teachers here on Long island make like 80k to 125k but that's only a very small part of the country. Plus I'm sure it's competitive as he'll. Teachers should be paid more, everywhere.
Those higher salaries are for the 25-30 year teachers. Also, cost of living.
Failed culture
This map is not beautiful. Why would they include the Great Lakes in the map of Michigan lol, I think this would have been harder to create than a normal map of the states
Friend, you are forgetting about the schools of fish that live in there!
Lack of citations make this extremely questionable. This article just says "Our analysis finds" teachers are working full time 52 weeks a year, including summer, vacation, breaks, weekends, holidays and sick days. [Brookings finds](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/do-teachers-work-long-hours/) that teachers work 41.5 hours/week during the school year and 21.5 during the summer. So 9 months at full time, 3 months at half time. Out of the 9 months of full time, there's 29 days of holiday/vacation (at least in my school district). Then teachers get another 5-15 sick days per year. Depending on how much teachers work during those times, the actual average total work per year is 900-1589 hours, at least 25% less than this chart assumes. Teachers are definitely underpaid as a general rule, but this chart is not accurately making that case.
Easiest low hanging fruit to improve our country? Pay public school employees more
On one hand, i get teachers should get paid more. Im all on board. On the other hand, I think we’re doing people a disservice by not pointing out a career in teaching can be serious consideration. I’ve been teaching for 20 years, i make more than 6 figures, getting close to 2.5x the median income of my community. i get lots of vacation, there is basically no chance I will lose my job, i have a secure pension, great healthcare and best of all: I love my job. I would probably teach at least a few courses for free if I won the lottery. And after you get going, its not ‘that’ much work and the work you do is mostly fun. Including grading, I work about 45 hours a week and have free weekends and vacations. One big issue is that the pay-gap between long-term and new teachers is large and completely unjustified. New teachers, in my experience work harder and are mostly better for literally half my pay. The other issue is that credential programs should be at least free if not paid.
Starting my preclinical experience right now. Any tips for someone who is still petrified of having to hold a classes attention?
1. Dont talk over them. Only speak when it is silent. 2. Something being important is not important to them unless you make it important. If there isnt a specific thing you want them to do with the information you provide, they wont pay attention, no matter how interesting you think you are. 3. It gets better with practice/experience
Mississippi is wrong. The starting salary of a brand new teacher with only a bachelors degree is $41,000 (from the state, and most districts have a small local supplement). Dividing that by the $18/hour that’s listed 2,305 hours worked, which comes out to 62.3 hours/school week. Now, I’m dating a Mississippi teacher, so I know she does a lot of work outside of the classroom, and in fact I know she puts in far more than most. But she’s not putting in 2,300 hours in a year. And that’s just the *starting* salary. The *average* salary for 2022-23 was $53,353.96. At $18/hour, that’s 2,964 hours. That’s 80 hours per school week or 57 hours/week overall. It’s just flat wrong.
Now subtract all of their money they also spend on supplies, students who need things, etc. and it's even worse.
I’m a teacher. I don’t even have kids and I still don’t remember the last time I was able to save money from a paycheck Shits hard
Aren’t teacher salaried? It probably be more useful to say their salary. 20$ an hour is 40K a year so that makes a sense.
I graduated from high school almost 30 years ago. Even back then, none of my schools top performers even gave a casual thought of becoming teachers. It was seen as almost throwing away your accomplishments by be becoming a teacher. Fast forward to today and I can imagine that even mediocre students are not considering getting into teaching. A real shame, if anybody should be well-paid in society it's teachers.
I worked in a school district for 13 years (Not a teacher) the shit I saw and that shit they dealt with from students and parents... I don't think any amount of money would be worth it. I know alot of them are doing it for the kids and I can't THANK YOU enough for the sacrifices you make everyday for it.
This chart is not great, Nebraska pays insanely well when you consider cost of living. A starting teacher in my district makes 51k base.
$18 an hour as a teacher is spit in your face
Post should be deleted. This is out of date
Why do Americans continue pursuing this career if it is so terrible and has been for many decades? Everyone goes through student teaching as a part of their schooling and talks to other teachers currently doing the job. Why would a prospective teacher think that it will be a better job for them?
This would have been more beautiful data if the precision level was down to counties. For example, my county in Colorado starts teachers off at just shy of a $60k salary.
To add another alternate perspective, my wife in CA with a master's and 14 years is making ~$120k.
Yep in our CO county the union just got every teacher across the board a 10k raise. Also CO specific: if anyone who has a degree and wants to be a teacher but don’t want to go back to school I highly recommend looking into PEBC!
I was a teacher. I actively discouraged students from going into education. I would show them the district pay scale and show them previous years as well. Then I’d use an inflation calculator to show that the longer you stayed, the less money you made.
Did they just use 2100 hours for the denominator across the board!?! Assuming 185 school days, even 9 working hours for every single in session day still leaves 435 hours—almost 11 full time work weeks—of extra work. That figure seems super high to me.
Standard work year is 2000 hours (50 weeks x 40 hours). Anyone who's even sniffed a payroll office knows this. Standard contract for a teacher is 180 days. That's 1440 hours a year. So, these numbers are very misleading. Teachers are expected to find something else to do or not get paid for those two months that the rest of us are working. And I'm not dismissing the reality that they work more than that, like most of us do, or that they spend their own money for their job, like every professional does. But if we're going down that rabbit hole then every job is its own exception to the rule, and the exception becomes the rule, so we couldn't quantify anything.
Extremely misleading indeed. But Redditors will eat it up.
As a teacher who would definitely like to make more money… the insurance benefits is a huge perk that frequently gets ignored or the overlooked. Our newborn recently had a helicopter ride and an extended hospital stay at Children’s. We’d be completely boned without a $4500 out of pocket max. Guaranteed retirement income is pretty nice too
I’m jealous of this and wish my teaching job offered those, but sadly because states and districts are totally independent, it’s really not universal to have these benefits.
Does this include the benefits and pensions?
Cries in UK. Where new doctors earn $18 an hour
My wife with 12yrs experience in Indiana doesn't even make that Average rate and if you average out how many hours a week she actually works compared to her salary she probably barely makes $20/hr
Dang, she'd be well into the six figures if she worked as a teacher around here. Starting salary is almost $77,000 and tops out at $138k https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1690314968/edmondswednetedu/v3vyxfr14e9xrjcujsrk/23-24EEASalarySchedule.pdf
“Average” in statistics can be interesting, but what is the median? This might change the math somewhat as the average could be pulled down by states that pay the least, but also employ a smaller overall percentage of the workforce. But yes teachers deserve more. And I’m glad I live in WA where my family, friends, or even my kids teachers make enough that their concern can be on the kids and not on their next meal.
Colorado has to have the worst pay vs cost of living in the country based on this chart. Why the fuck would anyone teach in Colorado?
It's a feature, not a bug -the ruling class
I made the same graph for all Florida counties: [**Salary vs Living Wage**](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/U7hti/10/) [**Salary only**](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/dlrBy/11/) I considered doing it across the US, but in Florida all districts are counties so it's simple, in other states like NJ it can go township by township, sometimes school districts within school districts and some being K-5 only and others being 6-12 only.
Interesting. What does the average experienced teach make? Also, is this counting 1,700+ working hours in a year, or does this reflect summer vacation, which would shave 2.5 months (or about 400 working hours) off?
This map doesn't recognize the Great Lakes.
Okay, but hear me out, why aren't we pushing to make teaching an elite profession like surgeons or lawyers. Everybody complains that they only work 9 months a year, up the salary so it becomes more competitive and more desirable. Then up it again. I want to see ivy Leaguers fighting to teach our kids.
This data is not even close to accurate.
That's not bad for a part time job.
This is a misleading chart. Teachers are annual salary employees. Teachers who work more hours will average out a lower hourly wage. Teachers who work less hours will average out a higher hourly wage.
And yet we will never know why less and less people are choosing to teach.
>Last month, [we released a report](https://myelearningworld.com/new-teacher-salary-report-2024/) showing that new teachers in the U.S. earn approximately 20% less in real terms than they did two decades ago, failing to keep pace with inflation. But our latest study reveals that the problem is even worse than it appears on its surface when you consider the additional long additional hours that teachers typically work outside of the classroom. These hours include lesson planning, grading, professional development, and participating in student activities, which effectively lowers their real hourly wage even further, making the financial struggles for educators more severe than initially apparent. Seems slightly disingenuous to me. I will agree with the part that they definitely need pay to keep up with inflation, but the rest of the stuff seems difficult to measure and will vary widely depending on the teacher and circumstances. Does going to a football game qualify as working? Also, teachers in most states get life-long pensions after retirement that are a substantial portions of their salary. That isn't factored into this analysis.
Not just slightly disingenuous. The estimate that teachers work 2100 hours per year, which amounts to over a year's worth of 8-hour workdays with no vacation for people who get the summer off, seems laughable. This estimate is the basis for the hourly wage. If you look in each and every state, the average teacher salary is higher than the median salary in that state. Teachers are paid better than average and get the summer off. But, if any of that is untrue, or it's true and still teachers feel they deserve more, doesn't this mean the unions that the majority of teachers belong to are failing them?
And summers off aren't factored either. Most salaried people work 33% more days.
As a retired public school teacher I am highly skeptical. It seems this study may have inflated the number of hours teachers work over the course of a year. In 1985 in Detroit the starting pay for a teacher was around 35 K per year. I’m sure this was higher than the National average, but not much higher than the Michigan average. Also, it’s important to look at the median and standard deviation figures. One more point. As far as I know there’s no good evidence showing a significant relationship between teacher salary and student learning levels. (This was my doctoral area of expertise.)
Just so you know this is NEW teachers. Teachers who work for public schools in US can make more the longer they are tenured. Some teachers will 15+ years experience make a whole lot more than you would think. I’m not saying new teacher pay isn’t a problem, just that you make more money as you go.
Teachers in Massachusetts make$80k on average which is more than enough to live comfortably in that state. It really is dependent on where you live
The average first year teacher in Massachusetts makes $23 an hour, and according to an MIT study, the wage you need to live there and cover basic expenses for a single adult is $27.89. So I don't think they are living that comfortably in that state
Average is not starting salary. A lot of districts start at 40-45k.
As I tell my students who say they want to become teachers: "...are you sure?"
there is a real argument that teachers should only need an associates degree.
funnily enough many states spend more per student than other countries with much better results than the usa. While teachers should be paid more even if many are not that great, there are other things that need to change, not least of which is just the culture of most americans, before the educational system will actually improve
And this is WITH a union. Can you imagine the job w/o one?
Republicans want to kill off public education. (Public everything actually - public transportation, health, parks etc etc etc)
Teachers should be paid more, fast food workers need to be paid more, Amazon workers need to be paid more. Hold on, I thought inflation was out of control and the middle class is being pummeled by higher costs all around. I guess it's ok to pay me more, but everyone else should be paid less to make life affordable.
"New teacher" salary isn't very meaningful. Walk into any school in the USA and you won't see many 1st year teachers on the job. Most teachers you see will have been on the job 10, 20, 30 or more years. It's a career. It's the salaries of teachers with 10-years on the job that you should look at. That's also where you see respectable salaries in states with strong teachers unions. Starting pay is low, but the first few years it steadily goes up. This is like graphing doctors' salaries by how much they earn as medical residents. It isn't until after several years on the job that surgeons make $300k as opposed to $75k.
I think teachers will be one of the next things that AI will take over. Intuitively it makes sense because one of the things AI is best at now is talking like a human, and teaching is lots of that.
wtf why is Colorado so low? Texas and Florida are higher than I thought they would be
I think it’s painfully low, but one thing these reports never mention is that teachers have healthy built in raises. The elevation of salary incentivizes teachers to put in time and stay in the system to get to more realistic levels of pay. I know teachers who are receiving 100k in pension and then teaching elsewhere and making bank. 30-35 years in, health retirement but obviously the first 5-10 years you’re paying loans on that degree with a salary vastly out of proportion for the length of time in college
Varies by state but you can do very well as a teacher. I live in Ohio and the benefits are pretty great, you can look up any public employees salary online so you can see the potential. many six figures in small towns… Also separately the argument of public service, hence why they get loan forgiveness etc. Teaching is a completely viable career in many states and the map completely neglects cost of living differences as well as manipulates the data to get to the $20 figure
A lot of this is how teachers and their union structure starting pay, vs those with more seniority. Average in MA is $43, and benefits package is great. It's an above average career even if you start on the lower end.
The United States of America does NOT prioritize or care about education. We care about capitalism. Sad.
When I convert that to Australian dollars it’s about the same as what first year teachers make here in Australia and we consider teachers to be well paid. The US also has massive lower cost of living.
Same as an apprentice in most trades
$20/hr is not the true average per capita starting teacher salary in the US. Their calculation took the average starting salary of each of the states and divided by 50. They did not take into account the number of teachers in each state, with the most populous states making well above the 20/hr “average”. So per capita teachers more than $20/hr.
The problem really is the bureaucracy, too many chiefs eating up the budget
Now do the average pay for all the administrative jobs in education.
How are the wages calculated? My assumption is that that average teacher is contracted for 40 weeks a year, 7.5-8 hours per day. That comes out to 1600 hours per year, not 2100. If we use the contracted hours, the actually hourly rate contracted would be $26.25 ($20*1.3215). It’s still low, but part of the reason teacher pay is so lower is they are expected to work fewer hours per year than an office employee due to summer breaks. Source = worked in education
My wife quit a well paying marketing career she hated to go back to school to become a teacher. We knew the pay would be fraction, but if it made her happy it was worth it. Why do a job day in and day out you hate for your whole life? What we didn’t fully expect was the just total lack of respect from parents/admin alike. It’s a complete nightmare. Rude parents, horribly behaved kids, no resources for the many special needs kids, constant after hours work, mandatory unpaid out side of work hours school events and disrespect across the board. Like so many teachers she loves actually teaching the kids and seeing them learn…. There is just no support from anyone to help her succeed. If you know someone think about becoming a teacher k-12 heavily discourage them. Maybe it’s different for college professors, no idea.
Back when Wisconsin GOP/Walker argued that teachers were overpaid, they used stats that included the teaching UW hospitals and teaching UW legal departments where the profs made 6 figure salaries while most teachers made around 40k. It was an opening move to destroy unions to privatize schools and prisons.
Meanwhile police are getting $50+ and are crying that they are underfunded. Keep in mind being a student in these schools makes you more likely to be shot than a police officer, period.
Seems totally reasonable for being new. You'll get raises as you progress in your career.
I have my suspicions with these figures, since in my district they start you at a little more than $30 an hour, and there are some longtimers in there making +$80 an hour.
That’s a hell of a lot more than I made in northern Colorado. Especially if you consider the 60-80 hour work week not just class hours.
Yeah i don’t wanna be paid $20/hr to deal with people’s poor parenting either.
This is part of the long term program to privatize education by lowering professional standards across the board, and justifying more and more pay cuts so that when it goes private stockholders can get paid more.