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2005 NEA Teacher
Salary Analysis |
Updated
16 Oct 2006
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| On June 23,
2005, the NEA
reported a national average teacher salary of $46,752--a 2.9%
real increase over the past decade in inflation-adjusted dollars.
On this Web page, I compare the NEA's data to reports of educator's
salaries in 1999 and 2005 from the Occupational
Employment Statistics of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other
data. |
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2003-04
NY Teacher Salaries (680+ Districts)
(very large webpage -- 4 minutes by dialup) |
| This
graph shows the average public school teacher salary by state.
(The District of Columbia, which ranked second with an average salary of
$57,009, has been omitted from my analysis because of missing data that
I'll use in making comparisons). Connecticut ranks 1st with an
average salary of $57,337 and South Dakota ranks last at $33,236.
New York's salary is actually its median salary, not the average.
It makes NY's "average" look lower than it is because the big
increases in NY teacher pay typically occur on the last few steps of the
salary schedule. These big increases raise the average salary but
have no impact in calculating the median salary, which is the
same as reported by NY State Ed [very large Web page with 680+
districts' salaries], $55,181. |
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| So,
are teachers in CT much better off than teachers in SD? Since the
cost of living in each state and the average wages paid in each state
varies, you can't tell from average salaries. In this graph, I
show the NEA's 2003-04 average teacher salary next to the 2003
median family income from the U.S. Census Bureau. (Family
income is broader than "household income." It includes
public assistance, Social Security and pension income). This
answers the question, "How much does the average teacher earn
compared to the family with an income that, when counting from the
lowest income towards the highest, equals the income earned by the
family exactly in the middle--the 50th percentile, if you
will?" This is the median income.
The graph is ordered by the percentage difference
between median family income and average teacher salary. On
average, Pennsylvania teachers earn 1% more than the median family
income for the state. In every other state, teachers earn less
than the median family income, which makes sense even for the salaries
of professionals since their salaries are included in the median family
income calculation and families typically have two wage earners.
In PA, one teacher earns, on average, about the same income as it might
take two workers to produce at the median income level. (Each
would have to earn $12.34 an hour or about 2.3 times the federal minimum
wage, which means a PA teacher earns, on average, the same salary as 4.6
minimum wage workers).
California, New York and West Virginia also have
average teacher salaries that are within 1% of the median family income
for the state. West Virginia?! The NEA ranks WV 41st
out of 51, with a salary that's $8,291 (17.5%) below the national
average. Presumably, WV is one of the states where teachers are
seriously underpaid. Compared to median family income within the
state, it's simply not true. WV teachers are doing as well as NY
teachers relative to the incomes of those around them. Other
states where teachers earn below average salaries but within 15% of
median family income include Kentucky, Arkansas, North Carolina, New
Mexico, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, Indiana, Arizona, Alabama,
Idaho, South Carolina, Tennessee and Florida. 15 out of the 23
states where teachers earn within 15% the median family income have
salaries below the national average. If median family income
is reflective of the ability to pay taxes, then relative to that ability
the teachers in these states are doing much better than teachers in
Connecticut, Alaska, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Maryland--the states
where teacher salaries are among the highest. It's these states
that have the economic capacity to raise teacher salaries, but if they
did so, it would widen the teacher salary gap between the rich and poor
states. Yet, if the poorer states with lower salaries raised
teacher pay to the national average, as the NEA would like, their
teachers would be earning, on average, up to 21% more than the median
family income. Nationally, average teacher pay is about 83.5% of
median family income.
Other observations . . .
Before I leave this chart, let me comment on the
NEA's proposal for a
minimum starting salary of $40,000 for all teachers. That
would put starting teacher pay above the median family income in
two states. In eight more states, teachers would start at
salaries equivalent to 85% or more of median family income.
Beyond that, the current average salaries of teachers is below
$40,000 in 17 states! Finally, $40,000 in NY (where average
starting salaries will exceed $40,000 for the first time in the 2005-06
school year) is nothing like $40,000 in Bismarck, ND, which leads me to
the next chart and a discussion of living costs within the states. |
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