Did you know that the average pay for a teacher in Pennsylvania is $43,247 a year, and $46,590 overall in the US? What if I told you that the average cost of living for a family of 4 in the U.S was almost double this salary?
Teachers in the United States deserve to be paid more.
According to The Educators Room, about 48% of teachers in the United States are parents. Since so many teachers in the US are parents and have to afford to take care of their families, a higher salary is a must for stability. Paycheck-to-paycheck living has become the new normal (and not just for teachers). Inflation from the pandemic has also made this incredibly worse. In just March of 2024, the price index cost rose 3.2%, and as inflation drives up prices, the value that your money holds declines. Teachers are working long hours with exponentially less pay than they deserve, and the United States government needs to raise the wages for educators across the board.
Congress members have been trying to make changes for educators in the United States, one example being President Biden’s State of the Union Address. Both blue and red states have introduced legislation boosting educators’ salaries, and according to USA Today, teachers made less than 77 cents on the dollar compared with other college graduates in 2021, yet surveys show teachers work more than 50 hours a week on average. In February of 2024, around 54,000 teachers quit their jobs due to the amount they are overworked and underpaid, according to Statista.com.
The American Education system is nothing to be taken lightly, especially after the Pandemic. Teachers have been struggling to help students who fell behind, doing everything they can like working overtime to grade papers and make plans in order to help their students. Even though teachers only work with students for roughly 7-8 hours a day, 5 days a week, so much more of their time goes towards making sure that those 7 hours are successful for their students and themselves.
In 2005, the No Child Left Behind Act was passed, which was put in place to help every student reach the appropriate level of education, but Former President Obama repealed the NCLB Act with the Every Child Succeeds Act in 2015. This better aims to provide an equal opportunity for disadvantaged students, including those who get special education.
Even though this act is a necessary thing, students are still falling behind, making teachers work harder to make sure that no child is left behind. Teachers need to be paid more if the government wants the education system to uphold its responsibility to this Act. If teachers get paid more, there is more of an incentive for the hard work that they do to keep students afloat. Contact your local officials so that you can urge them to pay teachers more.
