Should Teachers Be Paid As Much As Their Pupil Learn

Should Teachers Be Paid As Much As Their Pupil Learn

One of the top priorities on every U.S. president's agenda is education reform. This is the result of a continuing decrease in the quality of education in America. When compared to the rest of the world, the United States simply does not measure up to the educational standards of other countries. The comparison statistics may be inaccurate due to the methods in which other countries test. However, the endless resources that the U.S. has access to, should enable America to do much better despite misconstrued numbers. (Bartlett, 1996) There are multiple solutions to reforming education.

Most traditional theories have failed to show reasonable results. It is time to take a simple, yet slightly different approach. Teachers are America's foundation and it is time to significantly raise their salaries (Anderson, 1982). This does not mean raising money for education and increasing teacher's salaries by a small amount. It means giving them an increase that will improve their quality of life and allow them to better support their families.

In the year 2000, the national average teacher's pay was $37,900 per year. The average hourly rate was $18.22 per hour. During this time, there were about 7.5 million teachers employed. The national hourly rate for all employees during this time was $15.80. Teachers only made approximately $2.50 more than the national average, yet they are often held responsible for the outcome of a person over a given period of time. No teacher can be expected to raise a family making $38,000 a year. This reason is causing many great teachers to further their education or find other jobs simply because it does not pay to be in education. Although teacher pay increased over this period by 3.2 percent, inflation increased 3.4 percent resulting in no gain at all. (Apple, 1986)

With teacher pay being this low, no one can expect teachers to deliver quality educational experiences to children, no more than they can expect minimum wage security guards to protect America's airports. People get what they pay for, and if they are not willing to pay teachers enough to have the desire to teach, then they should not expect their child to receive top quality education.

States can build more schools, put computers in classrooms, test kids over and over, but they have still not done anything to improve education. All they have done is increased resources. Until the quality of the messenger in increased, the message will continue to be only average, resulting in an average learning which leads to average test scores.

If teacher pay is increased, then the desire to be a teacher will also increase. There are many people who avoid the field of education, simply because they know it is hard to make a living. By raising teacher pay, those people who are avoiding education for financial reasons, will once again become attracted to the field. As more people study to become teachers, ...