Can we stop already with the canard that teachers are underpaid? It’s one of those “facts” that’s tossed around all the time and has completely ceased to be true. I’m willing to concede that once upon a time it probably was true. I don’t have the data at my fingertips, but based upon my recollections of my childhood (admittedly fuzzy and vague), it seems like it was true at the time. It’s not now, and that’s not fuzzy and vague. I’m going to let the numbers back me up.
Thanks to the US Census Bureau, we have quite a bit of information about individual and family incomes across the US. Wikipedia helpfully collected the relevant information for us in two helpful pages (Household Income and Personal Income) that are far easier to read than the actual Census Bureau reports, so we’ll start there. Also, I’ve grabbed the actual salary chart from Fulton County Schools in Georgia. Why Fulton County? I don’t live there, but I’ve spent enough time in Atlanta (which sprawls across four counties) to know that Fulton County is basically the poor and (dare I say it) minority part of the city. It seemed like a good representative of not necessarily the richest school district in the country. The actual teacher salary info will vary depending on your locale, but it should be public information. Track down the salary charts for your areas and play along at home. If I were feeling more industrious I’d track down actual median salary data for teachers, but this is good enough to illustrate the point.
Before we begin, I’ll go ahead and point out that the Census data is from 2009 (the latest year we have it for) and the teacher salary chart is from the 2010-2011 school year, so it’s not quite a perfect match. It’s close enough, however, for anything shy of an actual academic paper.
Data point number one: the median income of all individuals over the age of 25 for 2009 was $32,140. This seems like a fair starting point, since we’re not really interested in comparing teacher salaries with high school students who are working part time for spending money. It also cuts out the college age group. Much of this group is in college and not working, and those that aren’t in college at this age typically have crappy income. So we’ve already filtered out a lot of the lowest individual incomes, which has the effect of pushing the median way up.
Looking at the teacher salary chart, we see that starting pay fresh out of college with no experience is $39,132 a year. That’s right – a 22 year old college grad just entering the market in this field makes more money than 50% of his fellow American workers. Twenty percent more. Take a look at the other end of the chart and we see that a teacher with 26 years of experience (so someone in his or her late 40s, typically) is making $62,59 even without adding any additional schooling. You have to add up the percentages in the income distribution table to calculate it, but that puts that teacher at the eighty fifth percentile for income. In other words, that teacher makes more than 85% of his fellow American workers.
Let’s make another, more striking comparison. Looking at the household incomes numbers, we see that a fresh Master’s Degree graduate with no experience makes $43,44, which almost puts puts him on par with the national median household income of $44,389. Don’t want to bother getting a Master’s Degree? No problem, you can still reach that point by the time you’re 30 just by getting 8 years of experience. In other words, at each of these points our hypothetical teacher now earns more money all on his own than 50% of all American families, including those with 2 or more workers. If our Master’s Degree student continues working there for 26 years (again, that’s only until his mid 40s), his individual income will now exceed more than 80% (closer to 85%, but not quite) of all American households.
At what point along the scale, exactly, are our teachers underpaid? And if you still want to argue that they are, then tell me, exactly how much should they be paid? More than 90% of our fellow workers? 99%? Should each and every teacher be paid executive level salaries?
Teachers are paid just fine. Sure, they feel the pinch, just like the rest of us. And just like the rest of us, they want better pay whenever and wherever and however they can get it. Also, they’ve told each other for their entire working careers that they’re underpaid, so when they feel the middle class pinch, it just seems like it must be true that they’re underpaid.
On top of all that, 70% of the teachers I ever had in the public school system were completely worthless. Even a typical student would’ve been just as well off without them. Another 25% or so were almost worthless. Typical students might have been a bit better off with them than without, but gifted students would’ve been better off on their own again. Only about 5% of the teachers I ever had would I call actually worth my while. Our public schools are so bad that I’d sell body parts if I had to (literally) to keep my kids out of them. So again, how exactly are these people underpaid? We pay pretty decent salaries to a group of people who can’t be fired and who get an ass load of vacation time. Don’t start with me about the hours they put in after school; I’ll make a detailed rundown of the number of hours I’ve worked in the last two years and show exactly why I have NO sympathy whatsoever. It’s called a job. You get paid to do stuff that sucks. If it was fun, they wouldn’t have to pay you to do it.
Next time you hear a politician tell you that it’s necessary to raise your taxes to pay for the schools and our poor underpaid teachers, remember that it’s all bullshit. It’s just one more very powerful special interest group looking out for themselves.
