book, 71 pages, 6"x 9" (paper), March 2008
The ability to effectively educate the nation's children hinges on the quality of our teachers. And to recruit and retain quality teachers requires that they receive pay commensurate with that offered in other career opportunities available to them. Unfortunately, teachers' pay increasingly lags significantly behind that found in comparable occupations or those requiring similar levels of education and experience. When all college graduates' inflation-adjusted wages began to stagnate in the 2000s, teachers seemed to be hit harder, widening the pay gap even more. A new EPI study, The Teaching Penalty: Teacher Pay Losing Ground, expands upon the research published in How Does Teacher Pay Compare? (2004) by providing new insights and updated data on the erosion of relative teacher pay, including new analysis that takes into account seniority levels for the first time.