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Well, these numbers certainly don't seem like teachers are being drastically underpaid like I commonly hear. Per wikipedia[1], 73% of individuals in America ear

Well, these numbers certainly don't seem like teachers are being drastically underpaid like I commonly hear. Per wikipedia[1], 73% of individuals in America earn income less than the average teacher salary of $69k. These numbers are just averages though - are long-time teachers dominating the pay scale and new teachers are getting paid a pittance?

bitshiftfaced 2y ago
Not to mention, most Americans work 245 days a year, but teachers 181 days a year.
doctorpangloss 2y ago
> Teachers make on average 5% less than 10 years ago, and 9% less than the peak in 2009-10, adjusted for inflation.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  Yes, that sucks, but regardless with the numbers as presented, it is hard to say teachers are scandalously underpaid.
  - zie 2y ago
    I highly encourage you to go do the job and see if you still think that's true. :)
    - snapplebobapple 2y ago
      Why do so many people continuously make this mistake? How hard a job allegedly is is irrelevant. What matters is how hard it is to fill the positions. Given that we can require so many to hve masters and doctorates and still get average salary where it is tells you its easy to fill, therefore these guys are overpaid, if it was hard to fill we would hace a higher percentage as just bachelors and comp would be higher.
      - zie 2y ago
        States have been dropping teaching certificate requirements for a long time. Some states go so far as to give pretty much anyone that can pass the background check a provisional certificate, giving them years to meet the actual requirements. Staffing of teachers is a hard job, some districts have full time staff just trying to fill the classrooms.
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      Well, after getting paid insane amounts of money to write software, pretty much any job I could realistically get will appear underpaid to me. Having said that, I'm sure there are investors at hedge funds that would commit suicide if they only earned what I earn in a year.
- mandibles 2y ago
  This is probably true for nearly all employees who have held their same job during that time, since raises rarely exceed inflation, especially recently.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  A lot of people are in the same boat there, not just teachers. Although as typical "graduate jobs", teaching will have less of a premium then it used to with the glut of graduates.
bigbacaloa 2y ago
[dead]
gnicholas 2y ago
I believe average teacher turnover is < 5 years, which would mean that the field is not dominated by old timers.
- jayd16 2y ago
  Lets say we look at two class rooms. One turns over every year and one has a ~40 year veteran. The average salary at any given year is half new and half veteran. If we look at turnover over 10 years, the average is less than 5, no?
  - gnicholas 2y ago
    Why would we look at it over 10 years, instead of asking how long the teachers were teaching for? That artificially misrepresents the 40 year tenure as 10.
    - jayd16 2y ago
      If you only look at a single year, then it paints the picture that half of teachers quit after a year but in this scenario 10/11 do. My point is that different studies can have different methodologies, still be valid, and without digging deeper can be misleading. You'll need more than "I believe the average is" to really know what's going on.
nine_k 2y ago
Depends on the state. In New York, teachers are doing OK (and, frankly, some of my daughter's teachers are awesome). In West Virginia things are more bleak.
ready-post 2y ago
I think it would be more useful to compare to other professions that require a degree, rather than all Americans.
- justin66 2y ago
  More useful still to compare to other professions that require a graduate degree, as most teacher positions require this.
  - psychlops 2y ago
    I checked 2 states, CA and NJ just require a bachelor's with a 3.0 GPA. Where are you getting the idea that most require advance degrees?
    - zie 2y ago
      Next go look at their provisional teaching requirements. California has a BSR test, that you have to pass, showing you can read, write and do math slightly above the grade level you will be teaching. Then you can get a provisional license and eventually meet the actual teaching requirements.
    - justin66 2y ago
      That's actually my bad - I know a number of high school teachers with graduate degrees, but I assume you're right.
    - vundercind 2y ago
      Some states do require it, and in others it’s practically required if you plan to teach more than five or so years, because your comp will quickly plateau at a not very high even by teacher standards level if you don’t.
    - orwin 2y ago
      How recent is that? In my country, you had to study for 7 years before being a teacher, and pass an exam (master degree plus two years learning from another teacher). Then, due to shortages (caused by low pay), they removed 2 years around 2010, so now its only 5 years - a master degree. They made the passing grade at the exam so low for some teachers (math and physics teachers) that you can treat it like it doesn't exist, and while the current government won't do anything next year because they have interest in makebelieve the past 4 years the education recruitment process hasn't been a disaster, you have talks about diminishing the requirements to a bachelor degree (they will wait until after the european elections to start pushing the idea imho). So most active teachers in place today had to study 7 years before working with kids. But when i will check the requirement in two-three years, i'll be able to say "they're pretty well paid for people with bachelor's degree!" too, event id it wouldn't be the reality for most teachers.
lotsofpulp 2y ago
> Per wikipedia[1], 73% of individuals in America earn income less than the average teacher salary of $69k. This is irrelevant to determining whether or not a given occupation is underpaid (or overpaid). Supply and demand determine the appropriate price, and if you think there are insufficient teachers of insufficient quality, then the price is too low. Similarly, if you had a too many well qualified people clamoring to be teachers, then the price would be too high. However, given what we know about what teachers have to deal with on a day in and day out basis, plus having to forego vacations during the school year and having an extremely rigid schedule, I would assume people with options (proxy for high quality) to forego teaching if the pay was only “average”. And that “average” is for professions requiring similar levels of time/stress/injury risk/time off/flexibility/upward potential/etc, so a simple mean or median average of all US working adults’ pay is meaningless.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  Sure, and that is an economic problem for the state/county or whoever sets the paybands to figure out. My usage of "underpaid" is more about individuals self reporting on being underpaid. Teachers are probably the #1 group of workers I hear frequently complaining about being underpaid. I would have guessed they were getting paid like $40k on average based on the complaints.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Your anecdotal data about who complains more seems like a meaningless distinction. You don’t think hotel maids and strawberry pickers and retail workers and food prep workers complain about being underpaid? The only relevant question is are the people who are teachers now of sufficient inherent quality and of sufficient motivation? If not, then there is likely a problem with the prices (since it seems evident across many, many jurisdictions and management levels). Also does not help that violent and disruptive students are somehow not automatically kicked out of school.
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      No, it is not a meaningless distinction. You are using underpaid as a take on supply/demand problem, whereas I am using underpaid as a person's personal take on their salary. If the supply/demand curve showed that teachers should be getting paid around $20k/yr, they would almost universally claim to be underpaid, despite being able to fill the open positions. Saying "Well, you're not actually underpaid" means nothing if people feel like they are underpaid.
psychlops 2y ago
Government employees (teachers) get pensions after a certain period so it's not a good comparison as they make far more money in the long run.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Not necessarily. Lots of governments and unions have negotiated reduced defined benefit pensions for newer (re:younger) workers.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    Still, the question is how does this compare to other fields.. not the same field a few years previously.
  - psychlops 2y ago
    > Not necessarily. So you are saying it is a good comparison? Or less strong? Do you have an example?
- rconti 2y ago
  Source that all federal, state, county, and local employees employed by any government in the diverse country that is the US all magically get the same retirement structure?
  - psychlops 2y ago
    I never stated such a thing, nor mentioned magic. The discussion is around statistics and averages and I was writing generally. It's disingenuous to assume the same thing applies in absolute terms.
yazantapuz 2y ago
A tenured university professor in argentina barely earns 20k...
- HPsquared 2y ago
  They have tenure, at least.
datavirtue 2y ago
Not to mention they all qualify for a pension after 20 years.
- rconti 2y ago
  [citation needed] This is almost certainly not true, given that comp would be state by state and county by county and district by distrct.
- justin66 2y ago
  What gave you that idea?
Amorymeltzer 2y ago
Well: >3,500 school districts (28.6%), employing nearly 300,000 teachers still offer a starting salary below $40,000. >They also say "23.2% of school districts pay beginning teachers a salary of at least $50,000. These districts employ nearly 1.3 million (42%) teachers." That is, it's not just long-time versus new teachers, it's district to district: not all districts are the same size and some big districts pay better. Average salary also seems to correspond pretty well to blue-state-ness in the top 10, with the exception of Alaska, for obvious reasons.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  If the goal is to determine how well-paid teachers are, the analysis should be standardized against typical wages for all workers in each area.
legitster 2y ago
> new teachers are getting paid a pittance? New teachers can more easily move to where there is better pay/demand for teachers. So I think they tend to balance out a bit. In our district, starting teacher salary is $59k and so we see a lot of young teachers.
davidgay 2y ago
> Well, these numbers certainly don't seem like teachers are being drastically underpaid like I commonly hear. I think you've expressing an underlying bias here that "average" is a fine pay for teachers. You should at the very least be comparing to the median salary of professions with similar educational requirements.
micromacrofoot 2y ago
Being a teacher also requires a degree in many places, some require a masters for full license. Average bachelor's degree is ~$30k for in-state public universities, not accounting for interest. Master's in education will be ~$40k. Starting salary with a Master's in most states is ~$45k
MarcScott 2y ago
> 73% of individuals in America earn less than the average teacher's salary of $69k. And around 95% of degree holding individuals do less work than the average teacher, and almost all of that 73% are less qualified and probably in less debt from degree courses. My son is currently choosing what he's going to move on to after he finishes school, and I'm honestly recommending military service over teaching. It's a hard job, with working hours that are beyond ridiculous, and you end up spending some of your salary on school supplies for your classroom and for your kids. Not to mention keeping your desk drawer stocked with snacks for the kids that don't have food. We need to wake up. If we want our children to be babysat, then keep things as they are. If we want our children to be educated, then we need to attract the best to the profession. "If you can't do, teach" needs to be reversed.
panzagl 2y ago
There is a huge difference in salaries between elementary and high school education, probably based on the traditional gender difference between the two fields. My wife has taught for 10 years as an elementary teacher and earns below the average teacher salary for our state.

bitshiftfaced 2y ago

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

doctorpangloss 2y ago

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

IncreasePosts 2y ago
Yes, that sucks, but regardless with the numbers as presented, it is hard to say teachers are scandalously underpaid.
- zie 2y ago
  I highly encourage you to go do the job and see if you still think that's true. :)
  - snapplebobapple 2y ago
    Why do so many people continuously make this mistake? How hard a job allegedly is is irrelevant. What matters is how hard it is to fill the positions. Given that we can require so many to hve masters and doctorates and still get average salary where it is tells you its easy to fill, therefore these guys are overpaid, if it was hard to fill we would hace a higher percentage as just bachelors and comp would be higher.
    - zie 2y ago
      States have been dropping teaching certificate requirements for a long time. Some states go so far as to give pretty much anyone that can pass the background check a provisional certificate, giving them years to meet the actual requirements. Staffing of teachers is a hard job, some districts have full time staff just trying to fill the classrooms.
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    Well, after getting paid insane amounts of money to write software, pretty much any job I could realistically get will appear underpaid to me. Having said that, I'm sure there are investors at hedge funds that would commit suicide if they only earned what I earn in a year.
mandibles 2y ago
This is probably true for nearly all employees who have held their same job during that time, since raises rarely exceed inflation, especially recently.
HPsquared 2y ago
A lot of people are in the same boat there, not just teachers. Although as typical "graduate jobs", teaching will have less of a premium then it used to with the glut of graduates.

bigbacaloa 2y ago

[dead]

gnicholas 2y ago

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

jayd16 2y ago
Lets say we look at two class rooms. One turns over every year and one has a ~40 year veteran. The average salary at any given year is half new and half veteran. If we look at turnover over 10 years, the average is less than 5, no?
- gnicholas 2y ago
  Why would we look at it over 10 years, instead of asking how long the teachers were teaching for? That artificially misrepresents the 40 year tenure as 10.
  - jayd16 2y ago
    If you only look at a single year, then it paints the picture that half of teachers quit after a year but in this scenario 10/11 do. My point is that different studies can have different methodologies, still be valid, and without digging deeper can be misleading. You'll need more than "I believe the average is" to really know what's going on.

nine_k 2y ago

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

ready-post 2y ago

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

justin66 2y ago
More useful still to compare to other professions that require a graduate degree, as most teacher positions require this.
- psychlops 2y ago
  I checked 2 states, CA and NJ just require a bachelor's with a 3.0 GPA. Where are you getting the idea that most require advance degrees?
  - zie 2y ago
    Next go look at their provisional teaching requirements. California has a BSR test, that you have to pass, showing you can read, write and do math slightly above the grade level you will be teaching. Then you can get a provisional license and eventually meet the actual teaching requirements.
  - justin66 2y ago
    That's actually my bad - I know a number of high school teachers with graduate degrees, but I assume you're right.
  - vundercind 2y ago
    Some states do require it, and in others it’s practically required if you plan to teach more than five or so years, because your comp will quickly plateau at a not very high even by teacher standards level if you don’t.
  - orwin 2y ago
    How recent is that? In my country, you had to study for 7 years before being a teacher, and pass an exam (master degree plus two years learning from another teacher). Then, due to shortages (caused by low pay), they removed 2 years around 2010, so now its only 5 years - a master degree. They made the passing grade at the exam so low for some teachers (math and physics teachers) that you can treat it like it doesn't exist, and while the current government won't do anything next year because they have interest in makebelieve the past 4 years the education recruitment process hasn't been a disaster, you have talks about diminishing the requirements to a bachelor degree (they will wait until after the european elections to start pushing the idea imho). So most active teachers in place today had to study 7 years before working with kids. But when i will check the requirement in two-three years, i'll be able to say "they're pretty well paid for people with bachelor's degree!" too, event id it wouldn't be the reality for most teachers.

lotsofpulp 2y ago

> Per wikipedia[1], 73% of individuals in America earn income less than the average teacher salary of $69k. This is irrelevant to determining whether or not a given occupation is underpaid (or overpaid). Supply and demand determine the appropriate price, and if you think there are insufficient teachers of insufficient quality, then the price is too low. Similarly, if you had a too many well qualified people clamoring to be teachers, then the price would be too high. However, given what we know about what teachers have to deal with on a day in and day out basis, plus having to forego vacations during the school year and having an extremely rigid schedule, I would assume people with options (proxy for high quality) to forego teaching if the pay was only “average”. And that “average” is for professions requiring similar levels of time/stress/injury risk/time off/flexibility/upward potential/etc, so a simple mean or median average of all US working adults’ pay is meaningless.

IncreasePosts 2y ago
Sure, and that is an economic problem for the state/county or whoever sets the paybands to figure out. My usage of "underpaid" is more about individuals self reporting on being underpaid. Teachers are probably the #1 group of workers I hear frequently complaining about being underpaid. I would have guessed they were getting paid like $40k on average based on the complaints.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  Your anecdotal data about who complains more seems like a meaningless distinction. You don’t think hotel maids and strawberry pickers and retail workers and food prep workers complain about being underpaid? The only relevant question is are the people who are teachers now of sufficient inherent quality and of sufficient motivation? If not, then there is likely a problem with the prices (since it seems evident across many, many jurisdictions and management levels). Also does not help that violent and disruptive students are somehow not automatically kicked out of school.
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    No, it is not a meaningless distinction. You are using underpaid as a take on supply/demand problem, whereas I am using underpaid as a person's personal take on their salary. If the supply/demand curve showed that teachers should be getting paid around $20k/yr, they would almost universally claim to be underpaid, despite being able to fill the open positions. Saying "Well, you're not actually underpaid" means nothing if people feel like they are underpaid.

psychlops 2y ago

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

lotsofpulp 2y ago
Not necessarily. Lots of governments and unions have negotiated reduced defined benefit pensions for newer (re:younger) workers.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Still, the question is how does this compare to other fields.. not the same field a few years previously.
- psychlops 2y ago
  > Not necessarily. So you are saying it is a good comparison? Or less strong? Do you have an example?
rconti 2y ago
Source that all federal, state, county, and local employees employed by any government in the diverse country that is the US all magically get the same retirement structure?
- psychlops 2y ago
  I never stated such a thing, nor mentioned magic. The discussion is around statistics and averages and I was writing generally. It's disingenuous to assume the same thing applies in absolute terms.

yazantapuz 2y ago

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

HPsquared 2y ago
They have tenure, at least.

datavirtue 2y ago

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

rconti 2y ago
[citation needed] This is almost certainly not true, given that comp would be state by state and county by county and district by distrct.
justin66 2y ago
What gave you that idea?

Amorymeltzer 2y ago

Well: >3,500 school districts (28.6%), employing nearly 300,000 teachers still offer a starting salary below $40,000. >They also say "23.2% of school districts pay beginning teachers a salary of at least $50,000. These districts employ nearly 1.3 million (42%) teachers." That is, it's not just long-time versus new teachers, it's district to district: not all districts are the same size and some big districts pay better. Average salary also seems to correspond pretty well to blue-state-ness in the top 10, with the exception of Alaska, for obvious reasons.

HPsquared 2y ago
If the goal is to determine how well-paid teachers are, the analysis should be standardized against typical wages for all workers in each area.

legitster 2y ago

> new teachers are getting paid a pittance? New teachers can more easily move to where there is better pay/demand for teachers. So I think they tend to balance out a bit. In our district, starting teacher salary is $59k and so we see a lot of young teachers.

davidgay 2y ago

> Well, these numbers certainly don't seem like teachers are being drastically underpaid like I commonly hear. I think you've expressing an underlying bias here that "average" is a fine pay for teachers. You should at the very least be comparing to the median salary of professions with similar educational requirements.

micromacrofoot 2y ago

Being a teacher also requires a degree in many places, some require a masters for full license. Average bachelor's degree is ~$30k for in-state public universities, not accounting for interest. Master's in education will be ~$40k. Starting salary with a Master's in most states is ~$45k

MarcScott 2y ago

> 73% of individuals in America earn less than the average teacher's salary of $69k. And around 95% of degree holding individuals do less work than the average teacher, and almost all of that 73% are less qualified and probably in less debt from degree courses. My son is currently choosing what he's going to move on to after he finishes school, and I'm honestly recommending military service over teaching. It's a hard job, with working hours that are beyond ridiculous, and you end up spending some of your salary on school supplies for your classroom and for your kids. Not to mention keeping your desk drawer stocked with snacks for the kids that don't have food. We need to wake up. If we want our children to be babysat, then keep things as they are. If we want our children to be educated, then we need to attract the best to the profession. "If you can't do, teach" needs to be reversed.

panzagl 2y ago

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