Earlier this week I held a town hall meeting to discuss the teacher pay crisis in America, what's going on with education today, and what teaching has been like during the pandemic. I was joined by Becky Pringle, the president of the National Education Association, Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Senator Ed Markey, and public school teachers from across the country.
Let me be very clear: Each and every day, teachers do extraordinarily important work to improve the lives of our kids. They are true heroes and heroines of our country. And it is about time that they are treated with the respect and the dignity that they deserve.
It’s also about time that we got our national priorities right. If we understand that the children of our country are our future then we understand that we should not have the highest childhood poverty of almost any major nation on earth.
If we understand that we live in a competitive global economy and that we need the best educated workforce in the world, we must understand that it is absurd that there are school districts throughout the country where there are major shortages of teachers.
And if we understand the enormously important work that teachers do, that means, in my view, among many other things, that we should be paying public school teachers a minimum of at least $60,000 a year — and I will soon be introducing legislation to do just that.
Teachers today are experiencing high levels of stress and burnout all of which has been exacerbated by the pandemic. In fact, new data from the EdWeek Research Center shows that almost 20% of teachers, principals, and district leaders have indicated that they have contracted long COVID and are still suffering from that disease.
The result is that some 300,000 public school educators and staff left their jobs during the pandemic and we now have a shortage of some 200,000 public school teachers throughout the country.
In America today, over half of our public schools are under-staffed. And to make matters even worse, these teacher shortages disproportionately impact schools that primarily serve students of color and students in low-income neighborhoods.
In America today, 44% of public school teachers quit the profession within 5 years.
Why is that? Why are so many public school teachers leaving the profession they love?
Well, there are many reasons. But one of the primary reasons is the pathetically low pay teachers receive.
In America today, the starting pay for teachers in almost 40% of our school districts is less than $40,000 a year. Further, 43% of all teachers in America make less than $60,000 a year. The situation has become so absurd that the top 15 hedge fund managers on Wall Street make more money in a single year than every kindergarten teacher in America — over 120,000 teachers.
Wages for public school teachers are so low that in 36 states throughout America, the average public school teacher with a family of four qualifies for food stamps, public housing and other government benefits. That is simply disgraceful.
In America today, hundreds of thousands of public school teachers are forced to work two or three jobs during the school year. Maybe they are driving an Uber. Maybe they are waiting tables. Maybe they are parking cars.
In the richest country in the history of the world, we have got to do better than that. It is time to end the international embarrassment of America ranking 29th out of 30 countries in the pay middle school teachers receive.
If we are going to have the best public school system in the world, we have got to radically change our attitude toward education and make sure that every teacher in America receives the compensation that she or he deserves for the enormously important and difficult work that they do.
