By Aswad Walker
Along with endless hours beyond the official schedule, exposure to youth carrying with them all manner of viruses, funding holes that force workers to purchase their own supplies and parents who take their children’s side whenever an “issue” is brought to their attention (and it always seems to be the most bad-a kids, too), teachers today are enjoying an ever-growing, ever-widening, ever-increasing pay gap between themselves and their similarly educated peers.
There’s even a term for this disrespectful phenomenon befalling the women and men who literally prepare the world’s future leaders, top creatives, forward-thinking entrepreneurs, etc. It’s called the pay penalty, as in K-12 teaching professionals are salary-wise, at least, seemingly being penalized for pursuing a very noble, thankless, yet much-needed profession.
Although teachers tend to receive better benefits packages than other professionals do, this advantage is not large enough to offset the growing wage penalty for teachers.
Sylvia Allegretto
An article by Sylvia Allegretto, published by the Economic Policy Institute reveals that Teacher pay has suffered a sharp decline compared with the pay of other college-educated workers. On average, teachers made 26.4% less than other similarly educated professionals in 2022 — the lowest level since 1960.
“Although teachers tend to receive better benefits packages than other professionals do, this advantage is not large enough to offset the growing wage penalty for teachers,” wrote Allegretto, who found that, on average, teachers earned 73.6 cents for every dollar that other professionals made in 2022. This is much less than the 93.9 cents on the dollar they made in 1996.
For Black women, these numbers sound eerily familiar, because according to the most generous figures, Black women (on average and regardless of profession) make 64 cents for every dollar a white man doing the exact same job makes.
“Gabe Smith”, a current HISD teacher who requested not to have his real name used, knows this pay penalty to be real.
“My friends from school ride me all the time about doing what many of them call ‘charity work,’” he said. “I know they’re giving me a hard time and respect my commitment to the profession of teaching, but they’re dead serious about it being messed up that I’m making less than all of them, and far, far less than some.”
A Katy ISD high school teacher, who also wants to remain “nameless,” offered similar sentiments.
“When I’m sitting in one of those parent/teacher conferences, and the mom and/or dad is grilling me and blaming me for the actions of their little Bey-Bey kid, while they’re screaming, I’m trying my best to keep my composure and remind myself why I got into teaching in the first place – because I love the kids. But to be honest, those thoughts do be creeping up in a sister’s head. ‘Yo sis, you could be making way more doing something where you didn’t have to deal with this nonsense’,” shared “nameless.”
“Teachers have one of the most consequential jobs in the country—they have the future of the U.S. in front of them every day. But teaching is becoming a less appealing career choice for new college graduates. Not only are levels of compensation low, but teaching is becoming increasingly stressful as teachers are forced to navigate battles over curriculum and COVID-19-related mandates as well as rising incidence of violence in schools,” wrote Allegretto.
On average, teachers made 26.4% less than other similarly educated professionals in 2022 — the lowest level since 1960.
This reality makes recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers difficult.
“A lack of well-qualified teachers means we cannot equip future tech innovators, researchers, and educators with the training they need to emerge as leaders,” stated Allegretto, who sounded much like HISD teachers and parents upon hearing the news in August that HISD would be hiring as teachers hundreds of individuals with little-to-no teaching experience or certification.
Strategies to fix this downward trend in teacher pay include paying teachers top dollar, i.e. as the skilled professional that they are; a targeted policy strategy that focuses on increasing school funding; improved coordination between state and local governments with federal entities to increase resources to teachers and their schools; and expanded public-sector collective bargaining via teachers’ unions.
