Many people believe that teacher’s salaries are woefully inadequate. It’s hard to disagree with that notion; it’s one of the reasons this nation has an acute teacher shortage beginning twenty years ago. And in some parts of the country they are more inadequate than others. Nevertheless, most people who become teachers do so because they love the work and the challenge of being able to mold minds appeals to them.
Teaching Masters Degrees Boost Salaries
You can enter the field of teaching with a Bachelors Degree in Teaching or Education. However teachers with a master’s degree earn more than teaches with a bachelor’s degree across the board. Virtually every school district in the country has a higher pay scale for teachers with a master’s. The Chicago Unified School District pay scale is a good illustration of this fact: they pay teachers with a master’s degree $4,000 more per year. That seems to be about average for most states.
The two other determinant factors with teaching salaries are seniority and the type of position. High school teachers get paid more than elementary school teachers. Qualified math and science teachers are often paid more than others teaching at their level because the shortage of teachers is most acute in those fields. Sometimes those variations may be nullified by budget constraints or union contracts.
Average Salaries
The last national survey conducted by the American Federation of Teachers occurred in 2007 and showed the median teacher’s salary in the U.S. to be slightly over $51,000. But that figure doesn’t mean much unless you are living in an average location with an average amount of seniority. Beginning teachers’ salaries obtained from the same survey set the median at $35,284. Presumably those figures have risen in three years, although for two of those years the country has been in economic turmoil and public education budgets have been slashed.
The variation in states is illustrated by the fact that the median salary for teachers in California in 2007 was $63,640 while in South Dakota the figure was $35,240. Those are the absolute highs and lows, but there are many states clustered near the top and near the bottom. New Jersey, Connecticut and New York are almost as high as California, while Mississippi, Louisiana and North Dakota are close to the bottom figure.
Salary Ranges
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics gives a little better idea of salary range by percentage in its annual report on careers and salaries. IN 2009 the lowest paid 25% of all elementary school teachers were at $40,850 or less while the top 25% were paid $63,600 or more. For middle school teachers the figures were virtually identical. High school teacher salaries were at $42,040 or lower for the bottom 25% and at $66,110or higher for the top 25%. One of the facts that is often overlooked in these figures is that teachers only work for nine months per year. These are salary figures for nine months work, allowing the employee to teach summer school for additional earnings or engage in a seasonal job unrelated to teaching.
