For years, teachers have been constantly overworked and have not been properly compensated for the important job of teaching future generations. Teacher pay in North Carolina is very low compared to other states like New York. According to Teacher Portal, the average teacher pay in North Carolina is $45,737 while the average salary in New York is $75,297. The teacher salary is very skewed across the United States and if teachers pay was raised in every state then Americans would have a higher quality of education, globally.
Being a teacher is a difficult job. They do more work than most office workers, but do not get paid nearly as much as them. Teachers are required to complete a lot of work outside of regular hours while still battling their duties as a parent or spouse. For this very reason teachers should get more money for doing their job even off hours.
Over the years testing scores have gone down across the United States, especially in math according to the New York Times. By paying teachers more, it would give them more incentive to do better teaching students. Some teachers only hand out worksheets to students and expect them to be done by the end of class instead of genuinely teaching the students. With the pay raise, teachers would put more effort into helping the students and making more memorable presentations. This would cause students to retain the information easier than they would if they only did a worksheet during a class period therefore raising test and exam scores.
The economy has had an effect on the amount teachers are getting paid. Inflation has made teacher pay hardly more than it was over 50 years ago even though it seems like less. The teacher pay in 1960 was $5,135 which is equivalent to $41,636.35 in today’s money. That’s less than $4,000 in 57 years. The teaching back then was also much different than it is today.
Additionally, Common Core was introduced to the United States in 2009, which changed the way teachers teach. Common Core is the education system in the United States that makes every student learn at the same pace and learn the same curriculum. Common Core restricts teachers from being able to uniquely teach their students. If they are being forced to comply to Common Core standards than they should be compensated for doing so.
A solution to this problem is simply to raise teacher’s salary. Teachers would benefit by making more money and would live better because of it. Students would benefit because they would have teachers that would be more enthusiastic to teach, not that they do not already. Raising teaching pay would have no negative benefits and would help the United States to become a better educated country.
