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How We Created the Teacher Pay Gap
The world has changed but teacher pay hasn’t. We need to fix it.
There is no denying that teaching is one of the lowest paying, least respected jobs that requires a four year degree. Teachers are fleeing the profession at a high rate, leaving behind a shortage that isn’t helping the youth of America.
The teacher pay gap is incredibly real. Based on a study done in 2018 by the Economic Policy Institute, teachers make an average of $350 less a week than comparable workers with similar educations. That equates to a 23% difference in pay.
How did we get here?
To understand the teacher pay gap, we need to understand the history of teaching in our country.
Back in the early 1800s, most teachers were men. This was caused by the fact that women had little education and little opportunity for work outside of the home. Still, teaching for these young men was never meant to be a career. It was never to be sustainable. It was a stepping stone until they found something else.
When that something else came along, schools ran out of a pool of teachers and started to recruit women. You think the gender pay gap is bad now, imagine what it was like 200 years ago.
“God seems to have made woman…
