The average teacher salary in the USA is $65,000. Tbh that's WAY more than I thought.

Raise the pay because it will raise the quality of candidates. Low pay attracts low performing students. I can't find it but recall reading that teachers have tge 2nd lowest test scores of any career field.

Average is highly skewed since the variation is quite substantial.

Median is more indicative, which stands at 61k.

50% of teachers earn LESS than 61k.

25% of teachers earn LESS than 49k.

but you don't want most teachers in primary school with a PhD in string theory??

Yeah. Like 61k is a whole lot different from 65k

I'm a teacher. Starting pay with a bachelor's degree for my district is $48k. You get to $60k after 16 years, or 13 years + masters or 10 years + doctorate.

It is decent pay for a very easy job. I wouldn't say I am paid highly, but also my quality of life is pretty comfortable, as I think it should be for a teacher.

But yes, we get a lot of time off, and that's rad.

Are you saying 61k isn't a good amount of money? The schooling to become a teacher is not difficult. I am an engineer, I had quite a few classmates in college who weren't able to get through the engineering classes in college and switched to education and had no problems, now they're teachers. I have a cousin who was always a bad student and generally not smart, he is now a teacher. Because it's pretty easy to become a teacher, I don't think they should be paid more than a median of 61k as you say. These people can also do a part-time summer job and pick up another $5k if they choose. Their job is not hard, it might be annoying at times dealing with problem kids and hovering parents, but the actual act of teaching elementary/junior high/and many high school courses is not that tough. I can say this because I went through all of those grades and know what I was taught and how they taught it. A teacher does not know what my job is like and does not know what it took to know the things that I know which are needed to do my job. So teachers saying how hard it is to be a teacher doesn't really mean much to me since they haven't done anything else but school and I went to school myself and saw what my teachers did every day.

One last thing, I don't think pay should increase to attract smarter people. What is taught in elementary/middle/high school is not very complex unless you're getting into 'advanced' courses like Calculus, AP Chemistry, stuff like that. Even calculus is very basic compared to what you learn going through a college of engineering and yet that's one of the highest level topics taught by a teacher.

Try living on $65k per year.

One year cost of Bowdoin College:

2021-2022 Cost of Attendance
Direct Costs
Tuition
$57,776
Fees
$546
Room
$7,630
Board
$8,268
Direct Costs Total
$74,220
Indirect Costs
Books and Supplies
$840
Personal Expenses
$1,250
Travel**
varies
Indirect Costs Total
$2,090+
Total Cost of Attendance
$76,310+

Time 2 to 3 kids

Higher pay means better candidates. I would rather my 2nd grader be taught by someone who is good at teaching, has a positive outlook, and has a high GPA from a good school, than a 2.75 GPA from a crappy school and doesn't care about teaching.

As a patient, I've been to my doctor's office many times. Does that make me qualified to perform a physical? No, because I'm not a doctor and I did not go to medical school. You were a student. You don't have a degree in education or an internship at a school, so no, your assumptions about how difficult or easy a teacher's job is means nothing.

In "blue" states and most major metro areas public school teachers make a pretty good living. It's all the other stuff that makes it such a hard job. I personally don't like how low pay almost always gets mentioned first in the list of teacher grievances, or at least perceived teacher grievances. It's probably a propaganda campaign to make teachers look like greedy whiners. When I was teaching, pay wasn't even in my top ten negative aspects of the job. The top two were probably class size and lack of admin support for behavior issues/placing kids in my 9th grade algebra class who were borderline illiterate and could not do 5th grade math. Not to mention the crippling phone addictions that admin would not support with confiscating.

Only a dummy pays sticker price.

They get paid way too much for teaching all that CRT.

Teachers are way underpaid. $65k might be decent money if you live in Youngstown, Ohio. But in any major metro area, it is crap. Realtors and car salesmen will make more than that.

The difference teachers can make in kids' lives is astounding. It has always shocked me how in the US we see teaching as just another service job. In the Scandinavian counties, teachers are considered professionals on par with doctors and lawyers. A bad teacher can wreck a child's education and emotional growth. My son had a lousy teacher in 3rd grade and went from being a total teacher's pet star student to a big discipline problem and hated doing any kind of school work. We barely made it through 3rd grade in one piece. In 4th, his teacher was amazing. He immediately flipped and got the principal's award for having the best grades and conduct scores in his class. I can't imagine what would have happened if he had a lousy 4th grade teacher.

Well said.

As a parent and a teacher I get what you're saying but what is amazing for one child might be bad for another.

Depends widely on location. I was offered a position at my high school 4 years ago and would have been around 55k plus coaching. I turned it down for a job in the bay area and this year I am already around 50k in the first 4 months of 2022 with coaching and assistant athletic director pay. Ill likely make around 135 this year and I think Im on the 8th step of the pay scale.

Yep. And Bowdoin is relatively cheap compared to the other top small schools.

Higher pay DOES NOT mean better candidates. Higher pay means you get greedier candidates, not candidates more passionate about teaching. Higher pay does not mean you'll get more teachers that want to do an exceptional job.

I own a company and I needed more people to work the night shift. I offered more money to get more people to work the night shift. Did that attract better workers? NO. It attracted workers that want more money for the same or less work as before.

Only a dummy has rent or a mortgage? Has to eat? Wear clothes? Needs transportation to work? Pays taxes? Electricity, internet, heating fuel, insurance?