"You know, it's tough to ask a teacher who's making $30,000 or $35,000 a year to tighten her belt when people who are making much more than her are living pretty high on the hog." --Senator Barack Obama, October 7th presidential debate
As soon as I heard Senator Obama make this statement last night, I thought to myself, "Are there really that many teachers who only make $30,000 per year?" Sure, there are places in America where starting salaries are still around the $30K mark, but he couldn't mean for us to feel bad for a 22-year-old who's making $31K per year and has to "tighten her belt" by drinking cheap beer instead of micro-brews. His "I empathize with the middle class" statement must have been meant to invoke a teacher with a family, maybe a mortgage payment--you know, real responsibilities. Which implies not rookies but those with, say, at least five years of experience.
How much are those teachers making? I dipped into the National Council on Teacher Quality's nifty collective-bargaining database for the nation's largest 100 school districts to find out. Here are a few interesting tidbits. First, even many new teachers are doing better than Obama implied, at least in most places. Sioux Falls School District in South Dakota had the lowest starting salary of the top 100 districts at $26,000. In fact, Sioux Falls was the only sub-$30K district in the mix. And one in five districts start teachers at $35,000 or above.
What about our five-year veterans? Only four districts pay them less than $35K per year. About two-thirds of the district are north of $40K; the average for the whole group is $47,000. Now, these large districts probably pay higher salaries than districts on the whole, partly to offset of the higher costs of living in cities (which most of them serve). But still, it's clear to me that the number of teachers "making $30,000 to $35,000 a year" must be awfully small. So Senator Obama: the next time you mention the archetypical teacher, you might talk about the challenges of her tightening her belt at $40,000 to $45,000 per year. It would be a lot more accurate.
Photo from Flickr user foundphotoslj.
