Think teachers aren't paid enough? It's worse than you think

Everybody knows that nobody goes into teaching to get rich, but teachers don’t expect to be penalized for their chosen profession. A new study finds that what is called the “teacher pay penalty” — the difference between teachers and comparable public workers — is bigger than ever.

In 2015, the weekly wages of public school teachers in the United States were 17 percent lower than comparable college-educated professionals — and those most hurt are veteran teachers and male teachers.

The study was done by Sylvia Allegretto and Lawrence Mishel and published by the Economic Policy Institute, a nonprofit created in 1986 to broaden the discussion about economic policy to include the interests of low- and middle-income workers. Mishel, a nationally recognized economist, is president of EPI and helped build it into a premier research organization focused on U.S. living standards and labor markets. Allegretto is an economist at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley. She co-authored two editions of The State of Working America while working as an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/08/16/think-teachers-arent-paid-enough-its-worse-than-you-think/