Teacher's Salaries

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Lurking over our great country is a troubling issue that is plaguing the professional educational workforce. When compared worldwide, American teachers work the most hours, yet are paid in the lowest brackets when related to the top 32 nations (Teachers Pay). In addition, when you compare a teacher’s salary to other four year degree salaries, teachers are among the 5 lowest paid degrees (O’Shaughnessy). Not only are the salaries among the lowest in the American workforce, a typical teachers at home workload exceeds all other professional jobs by 20% (Current). Furthermore, teachers were only given a 2.3% salary raise in 2009. Yet the rate of inflation rose to 3.1% causing a loss in purchasing power and creating a hardship on the professionals trying to instruct America’s youth (Carter). With teachers having such an important role in our society certain states like New York have conducted studies to monitor teachers reactions and teaching styles based upon their pay. While some see a reason for such large expenditures on our Department of Defense others tend to forget about the most important of the departments, the Department of Education. With 710 billion dollars being spent on the Department of Defense in the year of 2010 and only 110 billion on the Department of Education, it’s understandable to hear the common term “teachers are underpaid” (HOW). Even though states like New York have tried to create incentive programs for teachers, they just don’t allow them enough time to actually prosper. The high standards, low pay, poorly managed government budgets, and lack of effective solutions is causing various problems among the overworked and underpaid teachers of America.

Researchers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics say that t...

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