American Teachers Need a Raise
Flowers with a note that says “thank you for helping me bloom.” A bag of popcorn for a “very POPular teacher.” A set of highlighters that say “You’ve been the highlight of my year.” Teachers love getting these presents. I know from experience that teaching can be a thankless job, so any gift, no matter how small, is always warmly received. Most teachers go into teaching partly because they enjoy spending time with children and these gifts remind them how sweet and affectionate children can be.
It’s a mistake, though, to think that caring for children is all that teaching entails. Teaching is not easy, even though good teachers make it look like it is. Great teachers bring not just love and patience to the classroom each day, but also a set of professional skills and expertise.
So, in addition to a craft project, I urge you to acknowledge your teacher’s professionalism today by thanking them the way you would any other expert with specialized expertise. Shake their hand and tell them what a great job they did helping your daughter understand how to sound out long vowel sounds or helping your son to understand the meaning of place value in two digit addition.
But know that a handshake is still not enough. To really show teachers we appreciate them, more systemic action is needed. Today’s teachers are being asked to transition to new, more complex and demanding standards and are held responsible for students’ mastery of them. They must provide an increasingly diverse student body with a variety of ways to access high-level content each day. And since many students come to them without having had the chance to engage in high-quality early learning experiences, teachers must find ways to catch up students who have heard an estimated 30 million fewer words than their peers.
Yet the training, support and compensation we provide teachers has barely budged. Only a third of teacher preparation programs report that they give student teachers frequent feedback throughout their clinical training. As a result, six in 10 teachers report feeling unprepared to meet the needs of their students when they start leading their own classrooms. In-service training is also inadequate: The vast majority of teachers say that their professional development is not training them to stay up to date with their jobs’ evolving responsibilities, and that they have too little time to plan and collaborate with one another. And last but certainly not least, teacher compensation is stagnant and has declined over timerelative to that of other educated professionals.
[READ: Power to the Teachers]
Currently, the average starting salary for teachers across the country is $36,141. This makes teacher salaries 40 percent lower than those of other workers with college degrees. Young teachers are finding these trends especially problematic; they are more likely to cite low pay as one of the main drawbacks of teaching than older teachers and are also more likely to leave the profession because of low starting salaries.
By contrast, young people seek out professions like law and medicine because of a combination of selectivity and high pay. If we want teaching to be an equally attractive field, we must reduce the opportunity cost of choosing a teaching career. Some argue that it’s impossible to raise teacher salaries to the same level as other professional fields, but Center for American Progress research shows that not only is it possible, it’s happening now, in districts large and small all across the country. In some of these districts, teachers are earning six figures and reaching top salaries in less than 10 years; the early evidence shows that these changes are improving the districts’ ability to attract and retain high-achieving teachers.
As anyone who has taught knows, teaching is an intellectually, emotionally and physically challenging job. We need to acknowledge that by compensating teachers fairly for all of their hard work. A teacher earning six figures should not be an anomaly. While professional-level salaries are not a silver bullet, they would signal to teachers and the public that we respect and value teachers’ capabilities and experience. To really show appreciation for teachers, we need to treat them like professionals.
