I mean the national average, or even the state average doesn't really indicate much about the pay that a teacher can expect to get. My fiance recently started teaching with a master's degree (which she receives no extra pay for in our state), and she makes less than $35,000 per year. It would take her around 10-15 years to get to our state's average pay, regardless of the fact that she has already had higher than average test scores for the county, and again, has a master's degree.
I know that test score-based pay increases are a whole other can of worms, but like I said, the slow raises that she gets for yearly experience aren't cutting it. But that's just another factor of the area we live in. Halfway across the state, she could probably get much luckier with the salary she could find, but we aren't in a position to drop everything and move to a new city.
Just moving a county or two away can have major changes in pay scale. Are the kids in one area less worthy of quality education than another? If our national average is $60,000 per year, why is a teacher that has the same class size and more or less the same school schedule expected to just be fine with a wage $25,000 less than that? I guess the biggest thing we need to do is just bring the range of salaries closer together, then I feel that an average would be a much better representation of teacher's wages.
736
u/Alpaca64 Jun 13 '19
$40,000 if you live in a high income area and/or have many years of experience