Undervaluing Teachers
Dick Meister
April 09, 2007

Dick Meister, a San Francisco-based journalist who has covered labor and education issues for more than four decades. Contact him through his website, www.dickmeister.com.

Americans and their political leaders claim to highly value the teachers who are the key to meeting the unrelenting demands for improved public schools. Yet they continue to deny teachers adequate compensation.

The latest evidence comes in a new survey by the American Federation of Teachers. The AFT reported that in 2005, the last year for which complete information was available, teachers were paid an average of a little more than $47,000. That was only about two percent more than they averaged in 2004, and well below the inflation rate of about 3.5 percent.

Beginning teachers averaged about $32,000 for the year, an increase of only three percent. And out of that, many had to pay off the thousands of dollars in student loans that got them through college. Like all other teachers, they also faced housing costs ranging up to $2,500 a month. Many teachers, whatever their length of service, could barely afford to rent apartments, much less buy homes in the communities where they worked.

All 22 of the other professions, such as engineering, accounting, computer programming and the law, that the Labor Department lists as requiring college degrees, paid much better—an average of $16,000 a year better. Teachers, who must have master’s degrees and who average 16 years of experience, did do better than workers generally—but only six percent better.

The situation hasn’t improved much over the years. After adjusting for inflation, it turns out that teachers averaged just $487 more in 2005 than they did 10 years earlier, as compared to the $4,600 increase of the average worker in private industry. The teachers’ 2005 average actually was $800 lower than their average in 2003.

Relatively low salaries are just one of the teachers’ burdens. Many must spend part of their pay for essential classroom supplies that school districts cannot or will not provide. What’s more, the health and retirement benefits that helped attract them to teaching are being steadily cut back.

It’s no wonder that most of the country’s major school districts can’t find nearly enough qualified applicants to fill their empty teaching positions. It’s no wonder that the turnover in teachers is so great, and no wonder that one of every three teachers who leave teaching within 10 years cites low pay as the reason.

The AFT says if the trends continue, as they show every sign of doing, teachers soon will be earning less than the average American worker and the gap between the pay in teaching and other professions will grow even wider.

That’s happening, mind you, at a time when parents, the general public and government officials are holding teachers accountable for the perceived failures of the educational system, and demanding that they do much more than they’re already doing, for less than they might make doing something far less demanding.

“Given the difficulty many districts have attracting and keeping educators, the financial penalty for deciding to become a teacher is unacceptable,” says AFT President Edward McElroy. "If we’re serious about placing the most qualified professionals in the classroom and keeping them there, we simply need to make a significant investment in teacher salaries. It’s going to become increasingly difficult to retain teachers if we’re not even paying them enough to live near the schools where they work."

McElroy is right. He and his fellow union officers say it’s essential that teachers’ salaries be made truly competitive with those of other professionals. They calculate that would mean raising teacher pay fully 30 percent over the next decade, to an average of roughly $61,000 a year.

The cost of about $15 billion a year would come to only about three percent more than what’s now budgeted for all expenses by public elementary and high schools. Or perhaps the corporate interests that rely on the schools to train their future employees could contribute some of the money they’ve saved through recent tax cuts. Fifteen billon, after all, would represent just a little more than six percent of their tax windfalls.

It’s absolutely clear, in any case, that Americans will have to start putting much more money into teacher salaries if their demands for improved schools are ever to be realized.

Why why do they insist on changing things that worked. I got a great education in public schools. We were on subjects in 6th grade that they don't teach till 8th now. The biggest thrill in 4th grade is when Ms. Rigby would draw names from the "good" jar and take those two students for a rootbeer float during lunch. My my.. how times have changed. Can you imagine what would happen to a teacher now days for doing something so - horrible.

I got my first swat in 7th grade (remember those) with those darn wooden paddles they made in wood shop. Bleh - I never passed the answers to tests around again after that. Teachers weren't afraid of the students, and the students respected the Teachers. There was order inside the schools and the classrooms.

Teachers now days work for low wages, are verbally and physically attacked by students that don't want to be there, are told what to teach by some great teaching god - instead of allowing them to use their skills to teach properly. Inner schools, privelaged schools, every odd schedule they can dream up to address the shortage of teachers.

And then they want to blame the Teacher's Union for needing this NCLB act. We're told there are such horrible teachers that they can't get rid of them ... and that supposedly answers all the questions for everything that's wrong with the school system. I know there is a bad teacher here and there, but in my experience those are far and few between. Teacher's don't become teachers to get rich - but their wages based on area have stayed so low that there is almost no incentive for College bound young adults to give much consideration to the profession.

We need a drastic change to Education system.

Here is what Taylor Mali has to say about what teachers make.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsOVK4syxU

Wheee he certainly woke me up early this morning.

How can we work more directly to remove the Anti-intellectualism from the culture and to
increase the Oppenness of our goverment and all of our institutions?

"I make a ---damned difference, what about you !"



Great video.



Our society has things upside down and inside out when it comes to honoring teachers. Not only do they need to be near the top of the pay scale
(who has more influence on the future generations and thus the future of society and our nation ?) but they also deserve to be at the top of the list of most respected professions. In our monied culture, the pay needs to come first, then the respect will follow.

It has always baffled me that our children spend more hours in a day with their teachers than they do with us, and yet we are unwilling to afford them the commensurate compensation.


What can we do to help ? Terra has good ideas above- to press politically. And we can each make a difference by volunteering time to mentor a student, help a teacher, etc. Or ask a teacher what supplies are needed and then donate some pencils, paper, scotch tape... whatever is needed.
If we want to change the system, we need to be proactive - it can really make a difference.

Work to make the system more community based. The present system of using Grants' Management at the Federal Level to fund educational improvement which must happen at the
community level is not working. It waste the only available extra resources available for
improving education. Restructuring the system requires a political strategy. Any Democrats,
Independents and non-authoritarian and non-dogmatic Republicans out there interested in doing this?

I agree !

And a good start is to work with the local school board and force some action. It is amazing how effective one person can be. When my son was accepted into a math-science magnet program in 6th grade, there was a six-week summer program scheduled. Alas, I received a letter from the school board that it had been cancelled. I made a few phone calls and found that the teacher who would be conducting this summer program was now out of a job with about 2 weeks notice. She was single mother of three. Since the administrators at the county level refused to return my calls, I just appeared at the county headquarters without an appointment, refused to leave until I talked with the mucky-muck who was in charge of said program, and then gave them a piece of my mind. Surprise, surprise... when faced with a call from me to the local newspaper about their snafu, the program was instantly reinstated and funding magically appeared. Of course, I volunteered to call all the parents of the children who had signed up... a small price to pay to get the wheels the turning again.

Another example: our son wanted to join the cross country team in high school. Too bad: the rule was one coach per 20 student athletes. All full; no room for any more students at a high school of 2,600 students. So, my husband persuaded the county to certify him as a non-employee/volunteer coach: whallah ! Now 40 kids could join the team. Then another parent did the same: 60 kids could now participate. All it took was parents to push the system in a productive way and volunteer about 2 hours each evening, four or five days a week to help the coach. This volunteer "work" was so enjoyable that my husband did it for 5 years; others are continuing now. The county was so impressed with the success of this "new" idea, that they now certify non-teacher/volunteer coaches when a teacher is not available.

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Rla, as for your much more complex question, where/how to start ? I think it is a good idea.

My two cents for what its worth. First, we need to let Teachers have the ability to teach and control the classroom. That means giving them the authority to discipline and remove some of this PC crap. Respect for authority is eroding in schools and frankly I blame the PC crowd for this. If you kid acts up in class, I as a teacher should have the right to quell such non-sense. Kids are smart they know what they can get away with etc. We are also dumbing down kids by making the buy expensive calculators that can basically cheat for them in grade school. I am talking about $100 calculators fo freaking algebra and Geometry. I got by with my $12 TI calculator through 3 levels of Calculus in college. In fact it got so bad with the calculators in college I had one teacher ban them from ttest in Calc III class. As far as teacher pay goes, thats harder for me to parse out what a fair an equitable pay should be, but at a minimum salaries probably should keep up with the cost of living etc....

Wow. GOPGuy, can you please come to talk to our local GOP? They need an education from you

The social Darwinism approach will keep Me and Mine O.K. because we're already in the upper middle class and we can stay ahead of the crowd. Or one could ask, How is the social system actually working and what could we do, individually and collectively to improve it?