When saved by a doctor, thank K-12 teachers. Thank teachers when lawyers uphold justice, architects design great homes or engineers improve the safety of roads. Thank a K-12 teacher for your favorite restaurants and stores.
Our society’s high standard of living is not possible without the dedication and sacrifices of K-12 educators who prepare children to become adults who produce services and goods. Given this fact, we cannot possibly continue paying teachers as second-class professionals. We cannot expect them to forever struggle to afford the basic needs of individuals and families.
The 2022 “Dollars and Data” report by Colorado’s Common Sense Institute documents and proves the tragic tale of education funding. As we increase K-12 spending, the money goes more to administration and bureaucracy than to instruction and teacher salaries. Among the report’s findings:
• There is a downward trend in the share of dollars being spent on instruction, and more specifically, on teacher salaries. Operations, school and district administration and support for students all saw increases as a share of total spending from 2011 to 2021
• The share of total spending allocated to instruction, which covers teacher salaries, has decreased on average across the state between 2011 and 2021, from 45.4% to 39.1%
• The growth in central office administrators — which has increased by 132% — has far outstripped student population growth over the past 22 years, as well as the growth in teachers
• The number of building principals has grown 73%, twice the rate of teachers (36%), and three times the rate of student numbers (25%)
No wonder student proficiency rates are so dismal throughout Colorado. School administration buildings and the high-wage people who staff them don’t teach students. Money spent on central-office public relations specialists, quarter-million-dollar superintendents and “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” directors does not help children learn to read, write, add and subtract — or any of the skills valued by the markets in which they will live and work.
The report has Colorado’s average teacher salary at $60,234, ranging from $62,700 in the Denver metro region to $41,365 in the state’s rural plains southeast quadrant.
As determined by the Virginia-based Education Policy Institute, Colorado teachers are the lowest-paid in the United States when compared to “other comparable college-educated professionals.” On average, they earn 36% less than their comparably educated peers in non-teaching careers.
Teachers try to get by on this low pay in a state with a rising cost of living that ranks among the country’s highest 20%.
Teacher wages are so far below those of comparable professionals they compare to the earnings of trade workers who, unlike teachers, were not required to incur the costs and indebtedness associated with college educations.
The market pays average trade workers and non-teaching professionals what it must, as determined by a variety of economic forces. Public school teachers, by contrast, work in a system controlled more by unions and politicians than the organic forces of supply and demand that would typically increase pay in response to a shortage of teachers. It sets them up for mass economic exploitation.
Few pursue teaching careers as a means of making money. Adults teach because they care about children and the future of society. Possibly because those considerations outweigh their desire for money among our most dedicated teachers, we get away with paying substandard salaries. We expect them to merely scrape by.
Post-pandemic parents are involved in public education like never before. They naturally want schools to perform better and achieve greater results. Smart candidates for public office see this as a key issue in upcoming elections. Everyone — students, teachers, parents, politicians and community leaders of all varieties — should demand less spending on administration and more on the classroom.
Stop funneling more money to executive-level overhead and direct it to the classroom. Pay teachers as if our future depends on them. This is the best way to attract and retain the best and brightest to help our children learn. Without prioritizing teachers, we cannot spend our way to better results.
Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board
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September 12, 2022 at 10:18PM
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Colorado Springs Gazette: We can't keep treating our teachers like this - coloradopolitics.com
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