Teacher Pay Falls into the Gap

Salary growth for teachers lags far behind the salary growth in similar professions, making it nearly impossible to attract and retain the highest quality educators, according to a new study.

The study -- The Teaching Penalty: Teacher Pay Losing Ground -- found that public school teachers are paid about 15 percent less a week than people in similar professions with similar educations, like accountants, registered nurses and computer programmers.
Even when health insurance and pensions are added in, teachers still make 12 percent less.

"Teachers are the single most important ingredient in educational success -- and it's important for schools to compete for and keep the best qualified teachers," says researcher Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute and director of EPI’s education research program. "But this widespread and systemic devaluing of teaching sabotages those efforts. If you deliberately set out to design a plan to drive away your most experienced teachers, this would be a good way to do it."

Surprisingly, even during the period of solid economic growth, high employment and rising wages of the late 1990s, the teacher pay gap continued to grow. While earnings of college graduates increased by 12.7 percent during the boom of the 90s, teachers' earnings didn't grow at all.

Holding advanced degrees doesn't help matters -- in 2006, teachers with a bachelor's degree earned 12.2 percent less than their peers in other occupations in 2006, while those with a masters degree earned 11.3 percent less.

The EPI study offers the most thorough examination to date of the trend in relative teacher pay. In addition to breaking out data by gender, seniority, and education, the authors examined and compared their results, which are based on decennial Census data, to results from other researchers. They found broad consensus on the fact of a teacher pay disadvantage that has grown over time.

NEA is working to promote professional pay, and you can join the campaign. Learn more at nea.org/pay.

--Cindy Long