Although Columbus’ striking teachers say compensation isn’t their top issue at the bargaining table, new data illustrates the widening pay gap between Buckeye State educators and their college-educated peers.
Why it matters: Low pay is one reason why school districts nationwide are struggling to find teachers.
Details: Ohio teachers make 14.4% less than other college graduates here, per the Economic Policy Institute.
The big picture: The disparity is even wider on the national level, which saw a record-high 23.5% gap in 2021.
- The gap was just 6% in 1996. But while other college-educated career salaries have risen over the past four decades, teachers’ salaries have remained flat.
Axios
August 26, 2022
CNBC Marathon explores if why the education system in the U.S. is struggling by taking a hard look at the Common Core, teacher’s salaries and sex education. First implemented in 2009, Common Core was an ambitious initiative to revolutionize the American education system. National leaders from Bill Gates to President Obama supported the idea and it cost an estimated $15.8 billion to implement. Years later, research showed the new curriculum had minimal impact on student performance. So why did Common Core fail? Can a common curriculum be successful for all students? At the same time, teachers earn nearly 20% less than other professionals with similar education and experience, according to the Economic Policy Institute. In many states, their wages are below the living wage, forcing teachers to seek secondary jobs to supplement their income or leave the profession all together. So why are teachers paid so little and how can the U.S. fix that?
CNBC
August 26, 2022
Amid what is being called crisis-level teacher shortages in public school districts across the country, a new report offers a partial explanation: Average weekly wages of teachers increased just $29 — repeat, $29 — from 1996 to 2021, compared with a $445 increase in weekly wages of other college graduates. (The figures were adjusted only for inflation.)
It’s what’s called the “teacher wage penalty,” which the nonprofit and nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has been tracking for years. According to the EPI report, the penalty grew to a record high in 2021: to 23.5 percent, meaning that teachers earn that much less than other college graduates.
In 1996, the teacher wage penalty was 6.1 percent. Average weekly wages for teachers went from $1,319 in 1996 to $1,348 in 2021; for other college graduates, average weekly pay rose from $1,564 to $2,009 over the same period (both in 2021 dollars).
“Over the last 18 years, EPI has closely tracked trends in teacher pay,” the report says. “Over these nearly two decades, a picture of increasingly alarming trends has emerged. Simply put, teachers are paid less (in weekly wages and total compensation) than their nonteacher college-educated counterparts, and the situation has worsened considerably over time.”
The Washington Post
August 26, 2022
That finding comes from the Economic Policy Institute, a union-backed progressive think tank, that for years has studied the teacher wage penalty, meaning the earnings that teachers forego by not going into another profession that requires similar training and education.
When adjusted for inflation, average teacher weekly earnings have increased just $29 since 1996, according to the Economic Policy Institute, while weekly wages for other college-educated workers have gone up $445 in the same time period.
Chalkbeat Colorado
August 26, 2022
Why it matters: The district, like much of the country, is struggling to find teachers.
- One reason might be salaries.
Driving the news: A new study by the Economic Policy Institute looks at how much teachers make compared with other careers that require a college degree.
- Illinois teachers are paid 23.4% less than their college-educated peers on average, worse than Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana.
- Illinois also fares worse than other states with big districts like California (17.6%) and New York (13.2%).
Axios
August 26, 2022
“Seeing Lisa Cook be the first Black woman on the Board of Governors is amazing — that’s been great to see and inspiring,” said Kyle Moore, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington. “There are efforts at the Fed to diversity, this is evidence of that.”
Bloomberg
August 26, 2022
“I would love to believe something structural happened and [has] given those workers more power,” economist Josh Bivens, director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, said. But “I don’t think we changed anything all that structural to give them a lot of leverage” for good.
Politico
August 26, 2022
Virginia is the third worst in the nation when it comes to the teacher pay gap, which measures teacher pay compared to other college-educated professionals.
By the numbers: Virginia teachers make 32.7% less than college-educated workers in other fields, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute.
- The national average teacher pay gap is 23.5%.
- Only Colorado and Oklahoma have a pay gap larger than Virginia’s.
Context: EPI’s report looks at weekly wages as opposed to annual salary to factor in the “‘summers off’ issue for teachers.”
Why it matters: Virginia, like most of the rest of the country, is facing a teacher shortage, and most districts in the Richmond-area will start the year with vacancies and larger class sizes.
Axios
August 26, 2022
There’s evidence of that gap in the numbers: CEO pay has skyrocketed by 1,322% since 1978, the Economic Policy Institute reported last year; …(paywall).
Fortune
August 19, 2022