Rings true to me: it looks like American teachers' salaries are further below average than in most countries: http://www.olinmontalvo.com/2012/09/ratio-of-teach

Rings true to me: it looks like American teachers' salaries are further below average than in most countries: http://www.olinmontalvo.com/2012/09/ratio-of-teacher-salaries-to-earnings.html http://www.olinmontalvo.com/2012/09/ratio-of-teacher-salarie... There are a few questions worth asking about this, though: Do those numbers include benefits? American teachers may get more of those than overseas teachers. And how skewed is that data by the very rich in America? This page is also worth a look: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp The US is "below trend" for per-student spending vs GDP, fit linearly. Not by a huge amount, but it might be wrong to go on about how generously American schools are funded. That does depend on how the money is spent, though. Wages might be higher in places that are more developed, but it's not clear that materials should be more expensive there.