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Benjamin Franklin once famously quipped, “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.” Today, however, we can alter that to “death, taxes, and a slew of myths about teacher pay.”
Leading the half-truth brigade, on March 4, a headline in My eLearning World read, “New Teachers Are Earning 20% Less Than They Were 20 Years Ago.” The piece informs us that if starting salaries for new teachers had kept pace with inflation over the last 20 years, a teacher just starting out would currently be making $53,303 per year. Instead, using data from the National Education Association, the website asserts that the average annual income for a new teacher is $42,844.
The California School Boards Association laments that California teachers make more than the national average but less than a living wage.
A National Center for Educational Statistics table shows that using constant dollars, the average teacher salary in 2022 was $66,397, compared to $72,050 in 2010.
However, the above assertions are essentially meaningless when assessing what teachers really make. As Just Facts notes, in the 2021–22 school year, the average school teacher in the U.S. made $66,397 in salary but received another $34,090 in benefits (such as health insurance, paid leave, and pensions) for a total compensation of $100,487.
Also, importantly, full-time public school teachers work an average of 1,490 hours per year, including time spent on lesson preparation, test construction, and grading, providing extra help to students, coaching, and other activities, while their counterparts in private industry work an average of 2,045 hours per year, or about 37% more than public school teachers.
Overall, with various perks included, a teacher makes an average of $68.85 per hour, whereas a private sector worker makes about $40 per hour.
That said, there are legitimate ways – and good reasons for – raising some teachers’ salaries. Whereas private sector employees are paid via merit, teachers are part of a teacher union-mandated industrial style “step and column” salary regimen, which treats them as interchangeable parts. They get salary increases for the number of years they work and for taking (frequently meaningless) professional development classes. Great teachers are worth more – a lot more – and should receive higher pay than their less capable colleagues. But they don’t. Also, if a district is short on science teachers, it’s only logical to pay them more than other teachers whose fields are overpopulated. But stifling union contracts don’t allow for this kind of flexibility.
Last year, teacher union intransigence on salary issues was front and center in California, where there is a dearth of experienced teachers at high-poverty schools. In fact, a large body of research shows that teacher quality is more influential than every other factor in a student’s education – that includes a student’s socioeconomic background, language abilities, school size, and class size. At high-poverty schools, where students are more likely to be achieving below grade level, a quality teacher can make a huge difference.
However, the California Teachers Association is a roadblock. The teacher union’s policy handbook explains that school districts must use a single salary schedule to pay all teachers at all schools the same wages based on their experience and education levels. “The model is widely accepted because it is seen as less arbitrary, clearer, and more predictable. Because of these factors, the single salary schedule will continue to be the foundation of educators’ pay.”
The main problem with the single salary pay schedule is that it leads to “wage compression,” whereby the salaries of lower-paid teachers are raised above the market rate, with the increase offset by reducing the pay of the most productive ones. Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Institute takes it one step further, claiming collective bargaining agreements (CBA) hurt the bottom line of all teachers. According to Petrilli, “Teachers in non-collective bargaining districts actually earn more than their union-protected peers – $64,500 on average versus $57,500.” Petrilli’s study was conducted in 2011, and research by Michael Lovenheim in 2009 and Andrew Coulson in 2010 bore similar results. Also, University of California San Diego professor Augustina Pagalayan reported in 2018 that CBAs do not improve teacher pay.
Another way to increase pay is for teachers to teach larger classes. Fewer teachers translate to a larger piece of the pie for those who remain in the field. Education reformer Chad Aldeman recently reported that schools have added teachers nationwide even as they serve fewer students. He explains that between 2018-2019 and 2021-2022, public school enrollment was down 2.6%, but the number of teachers increased by 1.1%.
Nationally, class size has been shrinking over time. In fact, the student-to-teacher ratio has been reduced from 33:1 to 16:1 since 1921, and researcher and economics professor Benjamin Scafidi found that between 1950 and 2015, the number of teachers increased about 2.5 times as fast as the uptick in students. His study also revealed that other education employees – administrators, teacher aides, counselors, social workers, etc. – rose more than seven times the increase in students. But despite the staffing surge, students’ academic achievement has stagnated or fallen over the past several decades.
According to the latest data from 2019, Scafidi’s numbers are still accurate. As Heritage Foundation scholar Lindsay Burke notes, in public schools across America today, “teachers make up just half of all education jobs.”
Similarly, the Reason Foundation maintains that public school staffing growth far exceeds student enrollment growth. A prevailing trend across states is to add new staff, regardless of enrollment levels. “Between 2002 and 2020, staffing growth exceeded student growth in 39 of 50 states. Much of this can be attributed to growth in non-teaching staff, which increased by 20% across states. Even in states with declining student populations, public school staffing is still increasing. For instance, Connecticut’s staff grew by 14.1% while its student enrollment declined by 8.2%.”
Whatever. The sun will rise in the east tomorrow, and a story will circulate that laments the plight of the overworked and underpaid teacher.
Larry Sand, a retired 28-year classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.
Time return to the 3 Rs and their not Reduce, Reuse and Recycle and parents should have more time in the Education of their Child so we don’t end up with a bunch of David Hoggs and Greta Thunberg’s
Teachers can’t deal with larger classes anymore because the kids come to school completely undisciplined. If all it took to keep a kid in line was to call home (which used to be the case), then teaching 30 kids at once would be a realistic expectation. These days it isn’t.
Private & charter schools would solve that. (Thugs & future death row inmates are expelled asap.)
Even in socialist inclined Netherlands, the money is attached to the kid; not the school, so parents have the option to shop around. As such the school’s have to compete.
You are 100% on target, Sir. You made my day.
Like every Boomer, the most terrifying words I (or any boy in those days–the late ’50s into the ’60s) could hear from my mother when I (VERY seldom–I was a Good Boy) brought home a bad report card, or a Note from the Teacher for a Felony like Chewing Gum in Class, were: “Go to your room and wait till your father gets home!”
Ask anyone of my generation (I was born in 1952); we all remember that Death Sentence, and still, even today, laugh nervously when we share it with one another.
My brother and I were blessed with a superb public school education in our hometown of Needham, Massachusetts; and to this day I vividly remember, admire, and remain grateful to my excellent teachers there, especially at Broadmeadow Elementary School.
All of them are now dead, of course; but they they were wonderful, inspiring, empathetic, dedicated educators, devoted to instructing and forming our young minds with the necessary lessons of Life and and attitudes of good citizenship.
Oh, and–I almost forgot–all of us learned to read in the superb (but today despised and rejected as “Racist,” of course) “Dick and Jane” series of readers for young pupils. I daresay that the foundations of my eventual M.A. in English were laid by learning to read and spell “Oh, Sally. See Spot run!”
My lifelong love of reading, and my facility in writing (I’ve been a speechwriter and then a successful advertising copywriter with a major agency)–began with Dick and Jane, and reading, with attention and absorption, their innocent, wholesome family adventures.
I don”t think that any of these formative experiences, or that kind of education, are still widely available to the great majority of pupils and students today, at least not in our public schools. And we’re seeing the devastating, and dangerous, results of that loss right now.
In a world where lackluster activists earn $68+ an hour to have trans freakshows read (when not also pole dancing) to 1st graders, I’d say they rate minimum wage.
I know many who home school their children to ensure they learn S.T.E.M. & actual history (i.e. none of that 1619 Project fiction).
The Romeikes adamantly home schooled their children, and produced highly intelligent & productive offspring.
The Sleepy administration found that offensive, so it signed off on their deportation. (Only 3rd world, non-English speaking criminals need apply.)
I used to be an English teacher. It was the easiest job I’ve ever had. I didn’t get paid more than one hundred grand a year like the ones here in California do, though.
In NY, the more they ‘earn’ the less the students ‘learn’.
It must be like that here in California too because our government school system is ranked 48th in the country despite spending more money than any other state by far.
And parents tolerate that, just like all of us tolerate the illegal Alzheimer Joe Basement Biden administration.
Yup, right down there with W. Va and Mississippi. Sad.
A 60K salary for a school year annualizes at 80K. The fallacy that higher pay will cause a teacher to improve performance is ludicrous.
And they only “work” about seven months a year.
Can anyone but Hollywood elites make a living wage in California?
Government employees (parasites.)
It depends on what you consider living. Most of us here in Californicate are on survival wages.
I guess I should’ve got a job at the DMV or welfare office. Oh, wait, I couldn’t. I’m a man.
It would be nice for you to distinguish between states with teacher unions and those without. In Texas, teachers pay into TTESS, just like the private sector pays into social security. So when we retire, that’s when we get it, just like private sector get social security, so that’s not really a perk. We don’t have a perk of employers matching 401K contributions like some do in the private sector. Also, some districts pay some health insurance costs for teachers and some don’t. The one I work at does not, but it’s where I prefer to work. for various reasons. The main “perk” is that my days off & my kids’ days off are roughly the same. I say roughly because I am still required to do trainings in the summer. I personally think I draw a good salary, and it’s definitely much more than it was 20 years ago, and MUCH more than it was 40 years ago. I know some teachers who work really diligently and always do what they’re told to do by admin, but there are others who do not. The hardest part of teaching is enduring behavior from kids whose parents think their kids never do anything wrong. The 2nd hardest is the endless paperwork and being expected to have an independent education plan for almost every student in the classroom (an impossibility!). Coaches put in a ridiculous amount of time, far more than anyone in the private sector, but they’re also notoriously bad in the classroom. I personally know many who left coaching because they made more money but worked less hours in the private sector.
You don’t have health insurance in your school district? No offense but that’s hard to believe.
Name a corporation that pays all their employees a salary that average what a teacher receives with five years seniority and will receive 75% of their salary as a pension with 30 years service at the age of 57 with cost of living increases each year?
Teacher have failed to educate our children, and they graduate them from public schools unable to function in society. This is another reason America will become a third world country.
The solution is to close down the public schools and start with a new educational system without the current teachers, and principals, Hire all new people.