American teachers are getting paid less – even though they are better qualified than ever, new research has found.
Teacher salaries are down by nearly 5% compared with before the Great Recession – and it’s not because teachers are younger or less educated, according to the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution. In fact, the opposite is true.
“Many people don’t understand that is is becoming harder to stay a teacher because they are getting less and less money out of it,” said the Brown Center director, Michael Hansen. “They’re actually more qualified than they ever have been in the past, and we’re actually paying them lower.”
As a wave of teacher strikes and protests swept several states last spring, researchers found that after adjusting for inflation, teacher salaries had fallen by an average of 4.6% compared with the school year that started in 2009, according to data from the Digest of Education Statistics. The recent dip came after two decades when teacher salaries stayed basically flat.
The states that saw teacher demonstrations, including West Virginia, Arizona and Kentucky, have seen even sharper salary declines, of at least 6% each from their high point.
Some observers argued the drop wasn’t driven by school districts getting stingier, but by baby boomer teachers retiring and being replaced by younger millennials, who earn less earlier in their careers. The new report found that doesn’t pan out – the average teacher was actually three months older in 2016 than in 2007, before the recession. And teachers have racked up more advanced degrees that typically come with bigger paychecks – 54% have master’s degrees, up from 49% before the recession. The share of teachers with a doctoral degree rose from 2.5% to 4.5%. The increased qualifications teachers now have, minus other changes, should have yielded a salary increase of 1%.
The salary declines come as other costs are rising. Teachers are contributing an average of nearly $1,500 more per year to their health insurance premiums than they were 10 years ago. And many teachers are saddled with student debt as the costs of higher education rise. Many school districts pay teachers more if they have master’s degrees, leading teachers to take on more debt. A 2014 study found people with master’s degrees in education had more student loan debt ($50,879 on average) than those who earned an MBA ($42,000).
Teachers make about 20% to 30% less than similarly educated professionals in other jobs – a gap that is larger in the United States than any other developed country, the center has found.
“Teaching has become a much less attractive profession,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the Learning Policy Institute, an education policy thinktank, noting that American teacher salaries have fallen far behind those of other college educated workers.
Some American public schools are turning to foreign teachers because Americans with college educations are increasingly uninterested in low-paid, demanding teaching jobs. Many teachers, struggling for a toehold in the shrinking middle class, have switched careers. And fewer college students are choosing to become teachers. The need for mathematics, science, and special education teachers is especially dire in poor and rural schools throughout the country. 12,000 foreign teachers have come to the United States in the last five years on temporary J-1 cultural exchange visas. The three-year visas offer no path to permanent residence in the United States.
“Teaching has become a much less attractive profession,” said Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the Learning Policy Institute, an education policy thinktank, noting that American teacher salaries have fallen far behind those of other college educated workers.
Some American public schools are turning to foreign teachers because Americans with college educations are increasingly uninterested in low-paid, demanding teaching jobs. Many teachers, struggling for a toehold in the shrinking middle class, have switched careers. And fewer college students are choosing to become teachers. The need for mathematics, science, and special education teachers is especially dire in poor and rural schools throughout the country. 12,000 foreign teachers have come to the United States in the last five years on temporary J-1 cultural exchange visas. The three-year visas offer no path to permanent residence in the United States.
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