For all his efforts, Mr. Diperna, who earned a diploma and a master’s degree in education from Bucknell University, earned less than any other college graduate he knows. So last year, after a decade and a half in the classroom, he quit his teaching job, took a job as a sales representative for a major packaging company, and ditched his life of conjugations for a new life of cardboard. “I wanted to be a civil servant,” said DiPerna, 42. “I didn’t become a teacher to make a lot of money. But I wasn’t hooked enough to barely make it either.”
He earned more money in his first six months as a newspaper salesman than he did in his 15th year as a top teacher. “I’m getting paid more,” he said. “And I can hear nature’s call.”
DiPerna’s gain is America’s loss. Four years after the pandemic began, students across the country are still struggling. Test scores are declining. Absenteeism is increasing. Meanwhile, about 44% of U.S. schools are facing a teacher shortage.
If you’re serious about retaining talented educators and attracting new ones, you should start treating them like true experts. The first thing to start with is compensation.
Why don’t we pay American teachers at least $100,000 a year?
The average annual salary for public school teachers in 2021-2022 is $66,397, an inflation-adjusted pay cut of nearly 8% from a decade ago, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Pay is not the only reason educators leave the profession. But whether they work in the suburbs of New York or rural Mississippi, teachers earn significantly less than other professions.
The left-leaning think tank Economic Policy Institute calls this difference the “teacher pay penalty.” According to EPI calculations, teachers earned just 74 cents on the dollar in 2022 compared to comparably educated professionals. The right-wing Hoover Institution reached a similar conclusion in its 2020 report on educator compensation, stating that even after controlling for factors such as talent and experience, “teachers are paid less than they would be if they held the job in the U.S. 22% lower.” Economics other than education. ”
There’s nothing wrong with being an insurance actuary (average salary: $113,990), but isn’t helping a first grader read as valuable as assessing the insurance premium for a Hyundai Elantra?
During the education boom of the past 50 years, researchers have found that quality teachers, more than reducing class sizes or handing out iPads, are most important to student learning. . A study by Harvard economist Raj Chetty and colleagues found that students who had effective teachers in their fourth year were more likely to attend and graduate from college as young adults, and to have more success during their careers than other students. It was found that there is a high possibility of earning an income of
Some states and local governments are trying to address pay issues with complex pay-for-performance systems that reward teachers with bonuses based on student test scores. The results of these efforts have been murky at best and scandalous at worst, said Barbara Biasi, a labor economist at Yale University. But her research found that a simpler solution, increasing the base pay of effective teachers, would deepen student learning and keep great teachers in their jobs. Other research shows that higher base salaries also lower dropout rates and narrow the achievement gap between white and black students and white and Hispanic students.
Raising teacher pay is also the rare policy proposal for 2024 that garners support across ideological lines. Sen. Bernie Sanders (R-Vermont) has introduced a bill that would set the federal minimum salary for teachers at $60,000 a year. Last year, Tennessee, led by Republican Gov. Bill Lee and an overwhelmingly Republican legislature, approved a bill that would raise the state’s minimum teacher salary to $50,000 by 2026.
But these well-intentioned efforts are a “take two aspirin and call me in the morning” remedies. We need a defibrillator. This is a severe shock to wake up the patient from the near-death experience. When your base salary is $100,000, you can feel the impact.
Public budgets will also be hit. We explore many ideas in this Why Not? The project will save money. This is expensive.
Secret math: Just raising the average salary to six figures would cost about $35,000 per teacher, and with more than 3 million public school teachers employed in the U.S., the total cost would exceed $100 billion. Become. Do you feel like the defibrillation is finished?
That figure represents just five and a half weeks of Medicare spending, far less than half of the Pentagon’s arms budget, but still a huge annual sum. The federal government provides about 7 percent of K-12 funding, but it should not finance the entire cost. A matching program could be established to share the burden. For example, it would require $50 billion from the federal government and $50 billion from state and local governments. But that $100 billion would also likely mean increased taxes. Biasi and other academics I spoke to questioned whether taxpayers would be willing to foot the bill.
That’s why this significant pay increase comes with two conditions.
First, the school year will be longer. The scrapping of summer vacation could spark a nationwide uprising among 8-year-olds and tourism industry executives. But the nine-month academic year is a vestige. (Not many kids in Anacostia or Bethesda spend July tending to soybeans and preparing them for harvest.) Professionals work year-round. Teachers should do the same. A longer school year could reduce summer learning loss.
Second, we need to strengthen accountability. Many teachers are excellent. Some are heroic. But every parent knows that some children are just not cut out for the job. Under the current employment system, it is difficult to exclude these poor performers from the profession. And because pay is primarily based on seniority, mediocre teachers have little incentive to retire or even improve. Low-performing, uncommitted colleagues undermine the morale of most teachers who do their jobs well. Treating all teachers like experts means opening the door to fewer teachers.
One of the characteristics of a great idea is that it offers something that everyone hates.
Tax increases would infuriate conservatives. Reducing job security for civil servants will infuriate liberals. So far, so good!
However, many complex issues remain unresolved. How should we adjust for differences in cost of living? How do salary levels change? What is the fairest way to evaluate teachers?
But even skeptical economists favor large increases in teacher pay. That’s because it “calls attention to real, pressing issues,” said Michael Addonizio, professor emeritus of education policy at Wayne State University.
Biasi, a professor at Yale University who is also the mother of two young children, said: I feel like it’s a good use of money. ”
And perhaps that will encourage talented college graduates to consider teaching instead of banking, and keep all-star educators like DiPerna in the classroom.
“I wasn’t trying to make a lot of money,” DiPerna tells me from his basement office between sales calls. “$100,000? That would have been enough for me.”