Why Teachers Are Paid So Little In The U.S.

Seeing my 63-year old Civics teacher working at Walmart after school hours and weekends always hurts my heart.

Education simply isn't a priority, that is why they're paid so little.

As a parent I agree 100%. Teachers are grossly underpaid and the expectations are unreal.

As a father of 10-year old, I sincerely appreciate and respect what the teachers are doing to my kid: just look the smile on my daughter’s face when she comes home every day

The short of it: You pay for what you value. Apparently, education doesn't rank high on the priority list.

I'm a teacher, and although we knew this before, this pandemic really showed how little the US values teachers. Economically and as individuals

I'm a teacher who makes $32,500 a year with a master's degree and 10 years of experience. I will be leaving the profession that I love after this school year because I cannot afford to live on that low of a salary anymore.

ALL EDUCATORS SHOULD HAVE 100% STUDENT LOANS FORGIVEN.

I brought up this topic to someone & they replied “well, they don’t care about the money. They’re passionate about their job, they do it because they love it. Not for the money” and while that is true, that most teachers go into the education system because they are passionate about it, THEY DO DESERVE BETTER PAY. Teachers are so important!!!!!!

"Because the government doesn't want a population of critical thinkers" George Carlin.

I was a teacher for 3 years and my salary was around 27K. That's what they paid starting out. I taught HS Math and subed whenever needed during my planning period. I was expected to be at sporting events/games as much as I was able, have lunch duty one week a month and do carline morning and afternoon one week per month, and have help/tutoring class once a week for one hour. So most days I was working from 7am to 4:30 nonstop. All that in addition to checking tests and HW at home in the evenings and weekends, and having to stay even later due to a meeting or making sure I had my planning done for the week when many teachers fell sick and was expected to be subbing everyday.

Not only do they want you to be a social worker, a therapist, a teacher and learn safety skills, but they also want you to be a data entry clerk, a monitoring/evaluation specialist (i.e. grading and commenting in a meaningful way on assignments), and in some cases, they also want to micromanage you, and ask you to break the kids’ spirit. I taught middle school math (pre algebra, algebra, algebra 2) and at one school, I was evaluated poorly for taking 20mins to review a topic that I estimated would take 5 mins in my lesson plan. It was a review of what they learned the week before. When confronted, and asked what did I think that said about me as a teacher, I said I think it says I’m student-centered and dynamic/flexible. I noticed a few glaring misconceptions and addressed them right then and there, and I was able to do so thoroughly, on my toes, because I am so familiar with my subject. I nipped the misconception in the bud and re routed my whole lesson so as not to move on to more complex things before the kids were ready. My principal said she thought it showed I was a bad time manager and should have moved on with the lesson as planned and set aside time at a future date to address the misconception. I said that approach might be best in other subjects, but math builds on itself. You cannot move on without certain foundational skills, of which this misconception was one. She said no. Then she made me role play with her acting as the student and set a timer (that she explained was set up purposefully so that she could see it but not me). The first time I did the exercise, quite amazed that I was even being asked to do this and also still in disagreement with the premise, I went 1minute over. So she made me role play again. This time I went 1minute under (still with only her able to see the timer and me blinded to the timer). Then she said no. And demonstrated the way yo do it (so now I played the student in our role play). She of course got right on the dot, 5min (because, again, she could see the timer). So I was asked to do it again, with me playing the teacher again. Finally I got it very close to 5 min. And she ended the session with a very condescending “you’ll do better next time” (I had already been teaching for four years). She also suggested that I script myself in my lesson plans and time myself in a mirror the night before. (So now add actor to the list of jobs I was supposed to do. Never mind I’d earned multiple times speech competitions at the state and national level.) Frankly I think any teacher who feels dependent on scripting themselves daily should consider another profession. At another school, the kids were never allowed to talk to each other. Lunches were silent (every singe lunch, not just a one-off for a punishment), hallways were silent. They were only allowed to talk to each other during structured group exercises in the classroom, where if we heard the kids switching to social talk, we were asked to redirect them and issue demerits if the talking persisted beyond the subject at hand. This was the most depressing school I ever taught at. It broke the kids spirit and it broke my spirit too. One week the school counselor asked us to do a mind map where the kids would draw things that made them happy on one side of a stick figure self portrait and on the other side, things that made them sad. I was alarmed and brought it to the counselors attention when I noticed ALL of my students had school in the sad side. Not a single exception. They ALL put school in the sad side but the happy sides were all different. Some had soccer, some music, siblings, art etc. the counselor didn’t seem to care and didn’t think there was anything to do about it. I quit by October that school year.

No wonder why Walter White from Breaking Bad got into drug making business.

Let's not forget all the unpaid overtime teachers are expected to do

This breaks my heart. My teachers were some of the most important adults in my life. Teachers too essential to be getting paid crap.

I recently retired after 32 years in teaching. I didn't make a living wage until the last 8 years of my career. For each of those 32 years, I routinely spent at least $1500 a year on supplies (sometimes more) out of my own pocket, worked from 6 am to 9-10 pm at night, worked weekends, worked during our so-called "summer vacations". The workload is crushing and my wages didn't keep up with the cost of living. You have no personal life during the school year and barely have one during the summer. Why did I do it? The kids. I miss them every day. Those 32 years meant something more than money. But younger teachers are quitting before they get locked into the system because being an educator has become more and more difficult each year. Parents and the administration often don't support us, but they are happy to thwart us. Don't get me started on the politicians, who conveniently beat up on our profession for votes and cheap applause. Our schools are broken because as we veterans retire, younger teachers are NOT taking our place. I don't blame them. We need more money, but also more autonomy and respect. I won't hold my breath.

Politicians have no incentives to have educated voters.

One of the things that makes this worse is the fact that many teachers aren’t given enough money to get supplies for their students so they have to use their own money. I vividly remember a teacher nearly in tears when she was talking about how there were no more public pencils for us because people kept taking them

It’s good to see teachers standing up for themselves and not accepting the toxicity and disrespect in these districts.

When I first started as a teaching assistant, I came to the school early to plan and stayed later planning and getting things together. Since I worked by the hour, I figured I put my time in for the hours I worked. Then the secretary told me that I only put in the school hours even though I invested at least 3 extra hours a day to get things together for the students. And that's not including stuff I did at home. Plus I had a second job. And that second job was getting higher raises than my TA job. So I had HS kids and people coming off the street working at my second job getting almost as much as my TA job which I got a degree and experience for.