Underpaid, Overworked: A Story About Teacher Salary
Is $45,000 a year enough money to live comfortably? This amount is the yearly pay of teachers around the United States. Some teachers across the United States make even less; teachers in South Dakota don’t even make a salary of $40,000. While salary is bound to vary state to state due to the cost of living, a $30,000 gap in salary for the same exact job seems excessive. New York is the highest paying state for teachers, their average annual salary being $75,279 according to The Washington Post. North Carolina is listed among the lowest salaries, being an average of $45,947. In a poll conducted through Twitter, 92% of people agreed that teacher salary is too low, 40% of those people saying that teachers should be paid at least $70,000 a year. Writers at The Huffington Post agree that teachers should be paid more, if for no other reason than to encourage college students to see teaching as a viable career path. Teachers also work long hours day after day, still earning less pay than most people working the same amount of time in other professions. Many skilled professionals leave their jobs as teachers as a result of low pay, which in turn means that schools are continuously hiring new teachers with less experience. Education is an extremely valuable field of study and arguably the MOST valuable. Teachers impact essentially every aspect of their students lives, setting them up for success in the future and directly impacting them as people in the community. Considering the significant impact of the education system, increasing teacher pay may be a good idea as the quality of education would ultimately heighten.
Sources:
http://www.bluffcityed.com/2015/02/heres-pay-teachers/
http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-teachers-get-paid-more
http://www.theteachersalaryproject.org/facts-about-teachers-2/
http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/docs/fbs/finance/salary/schedules/2016-17schedules.pdf
