There are numerous reasons people leave teaching careers prematurely or avoid them altogether, but as I wrote here and here, shitty pay is surely at the top of the list.
An outstanding new report by Sylvia Allegretto @Sly21 at the Economic Policy Institute uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics to comprehensively illustrate what I previously described from my own experience at LAUSD.
I've included a couple of pertinent graphs here:
And here:
The pictures tell part of the story, but the report has a wealth of important information and connects the teacher pay issue to the teacher shortage and school funding overall.
To the teachers out there:
- No, you are not imagining things. I was getting screwed when I was in the game, and you are getting screwed now.
To the teachers in LAUSD and UTLA members in particular:
- You have a right to the raise you're asking for.
To all the education reporters out there:
- You need to include this information on pay every single time you report on the teacher and school staffing shortage.
- You need to stop pretending that the staffing shortage is a mystery or a force of nature. Its causes are known. Enumerate them.
- You need to report the staffing shortage for what it is: a policy choice.
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