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At the last "Save Our Schools" rally, Matt Damon said:

So you think job insecurity is what makes me work hard? I want to be an actor. That’s not an incentive. That’s the thing: See, you take this MBA-style thinking, right? It’s the problem with ed policy right now, this intrinsically paternalistic view of problems that are much more complex than that. It’s like saying a teacher is going to get lazy when they have tenure. A teacher wants to teach. I mean, why else would you take a shitty salary and really long hours and do that job unless you really love to do it?

Are teachers paid poorly in the United States compared to other professions?

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Can you narrow the focus of this question a bit, as it stands now there are a lot of factors involved with pay and compensation which make this question a bit too broad. – Rob Z Sep 6 '12 at 14:02
@RobZ, such as? Geographical location, educational level, sex, ... – user1873 Sep 6 '12 at 14:18
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@RobZ I think this question can work as it is now, the claim is pretty broad, but it is stated that way by Matt Damon and others. It is the responsibility of the answerers here to explain the various factors at play here and provide some context. I'll make it explicitly about the US though, as the tag is easy to overlook. – Fabian♦ Sep 6 '12 at 16:39
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Are teachers paid poorly in comparison to what? Other professions in the U.S.? Teachers in other countries? – Flimzy Sep 7 '12 at 1:44
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I'm not sure this can be answered without a solid metric to compare against. Paid poorly in relation to people of similar education? Impact on society? How much ^$%@ they have to deal with from parents and government mandates? The average American? The idea of being paid well or poorly is very relative. – Bart Silverstrim Sep 16 '12 at 5:09
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2 Answers

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PayScale has nice infographic

enter image description here

Also on PayScale you can see, that the salary range for people with Bachelor degree is $33,421 - $102,559, thus primary and secondary school teachers are at the low end.

Bachelor is minimum degree required of teacher.

Also if you look at answer to question about college ROI, you can see that teachers' salary is inline with graduate of the worst of the worst colleges.

Another interesting ranking on PayScale is "Best Undergrad College Degrees By Salary", full list consists of 120 degrees sorted by median mid-career salary, Education is in the 98th place of 120, Elementary Education 119th of 120.

  • 1 Petroleum Engineering — $155,000
  • 2 Chemical Engineering — $109,000
  • 3 Electrical Engineering (EE) — $103,000

[...]

  • 98 Education — $54,700

[...]

  • 119 Elementary Education — $44,000
  • 120 Child and Family Studies — $40,500
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I'm not sure this is accurate representation. Teachers are 'unemployed' for 1/4 of the year during summer. If this is their salary without summer you would have to factor in their salary they make with part time jobs during summer hours. Even assuming the average salary of a high school grad (33,000) for a teacher working 1/4 of the year at part time summer jobs we can assume anothrer 5-8 thousand in additional income (I'm underestimating because part time summer employees probably make less then full time) – dsollen Sep 6 '12 at 17:09
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despite my last comment I would still say teachers are underpaid, since the underpaid complaint is usually leveled at elementary and secondary school age teachers. Even if you assume they make another 8,000 a year during the summer they will be averaging 50,300 or less which is still around the average of the worst shools as linked above. By implication of the linked ROI question this means that secondary/elementary school teaders are worse off financially then those that never went to college. Also, the average pay of teachers includes PHD and MA educated, who should be payed even more. – dsollen Sep 6 '12 at 17:15
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@dsollen, let's also take into account Work Stress. Typically this involves unpaid overtime work to prepare for classes, grade papers, and etc. At least for every single teacher I've had (which admittedly is an incredibly small sample size relative to all other teachers), their main burden comes from all the outside work and extra effort that makes them so stressed. So for the hours they work, they are massively underpaid. – ardentsonata Sep 6 '12 at 18:35
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There are other ways to look at it; do you look at the hours a teacher puts in? The workday doesn't end for teachers when the bell rings. Depending on the subject matter there can be workdays that extend well into the night. If you take the salary and divide by work hours, it's ridiculously low. If you take the salary and say they get that for 9 months of work at average workdays, it looks like they're overpaid. – Bart Silverstrim Sep 14 '12 at 13:59
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And I don't know how well this takes factors into account like teachers paying for their own supplies. I know this is anecdotal but the teachers here have routinely purchased many school supplies. This year cutbacks means they're now buying tissues for the classroom, which (in our area) wasn't done before. It adds up and comes out of their salaries. And this is in addition to other classroom needs that they were paying for. – Bart Silverstrim Sep 14 '12 at 14:01
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No, not according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures.

the national annual median wage, which was $33,840 in May 2010

Table 2.

Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education - $51,660

Or from their occupational handbook, which has this nice graph.

2010 Median Pay - $51,380 per year

The National Center for Educational Statistics shows Base Salary by state based on years of experience. You can compare those numbers with BLS numbers and you will discover that even starting pay for teachers is higher than the national median salary, or do comparisons by state.

Even when you compare teachers with other occupations that require a bachelor's degree, the data doesn't look bad for teachers (BLS querry, search by education, bachelor's degree, (sort by) 2010 median annual wage. You will find that teachers rank 96-117th out of 154.) They are less than a standard deviation from the mean, only 16% difference from the median salary Accountants and Auditors.

$65,060 - Average salary all 154 occupations listed for which the typical entry-level education is Bachelor's degree, sorted by 2010 median annual wage.

$61,690 - (76th) Median Occupation, Accountants and Auditors

$20,815 - Standard Deviation

$53,230 - (105th) Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education

$51,960 - (109th) Middle School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education

$51,660 - (110th) Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education

$48,800 - (117th) Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education

Additionally, this only compares annual salary of teachers versus other professions. Teachers work fewer hours per day (including weekends), and teachers work fewer (185 days/year) on average versus 230 days/year. I used an 8 hour work day, even though teachers typically work less hours than most other occupations (see chart below).

Median Salary (all 154 occupations) $61,690 / (230 * 8) = $33.53/hour

Median Teacher's Salary $51,380 / (185 * 8) = $34.72

enter image description here

If we further correct this data by adjusting for sex, 0.9 wage gap for women teachers (page 80), in this predominantly female field (84%). This also doesn't correct for CEO pay and Engineering pay that are highly dominated by males. This is all before you even look at benefits.

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The thing is, when compared to other people with a College/Graduate degree, they're not paid any better. The National Median includes everybody who hasn't had college courses. When compared to peers with similar years spent in Undergrad/Graduate courses, Teachers get paid average or less. – MCM Sep 6 '12 at 14:20
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I agree with @MCM just going off of the medium wage is doing a disservice and at a minimum you need to be looking at the medium within the same educational bracket as the national medium includes everyone from no high school diploma all the way up to professional degrees. Teaching requires at least a Bachelors degree for entry and in some region requires a Masters degree for professional licensure so it's not a valid comparison as it is now. – Rob Z Sep 6 '12 at 14:25
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In addition to what the others have said (which I also agree on) teachers tend to work longer then 8 hours (admitedly many other high paying jobs result in longer hours as well; making this a hard factor to appropriately analize. In addition they 'suffer' from summer due to being put out of work for 1/4 of the year and needing to take (usually lower paying) jobs each year (including time spent securing a new job every summer if they don't return to the same place of work each year). These factors should be taken into account as well. – dsollen Sep 6 '12 at 17:02
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@Muro - A college degree does not guarantee a person a salary level; however, if you are required by law to hold a degree to gain licensure then comparing non degree holders is not a similar comparison. – Rob Z Sep 7 '12 at 2:58
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@Kibbee, is that necessary at this point. When compared to all occupations requiring a bachelor's degree, and when adjusting for hours worked per year, they are paid more than the median occupation. It is true that engineering degrees pay more, but even when judged against them teachers don't do "poorly." I suppose if I wanted to show that teachers are "richly compensated" that I might need to go that far, but as it stands Matt Damon is wrong. – user1873 Sep 7 '12 at 14:13
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