As students settle into the first semester of the new school year, the teacher shortage in the United States has reached crisis levels – and state leaders are struggling to keep classrooms staffed. New Mexico deployed the National Guard to fill in. Florida is hiring veterans without college degrees or teacher certifications. Arizona is letting college students teach before they’ve earned their degrees.

Why aren’t more people becoming teachers? The answer is simple: We don’t pay teachers what they are worth. A new study from the Economic Policy Institute shows that teachers are paid significantly less than their college-educated peers in other fields – and this trend has only worsened over time.

Here are just a few of the startling statistics from the study (If you want to get into the nitty-gritty, you can read the rest here!):

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* Teachers’ average weekly wages increased just $29 from 1996 to 2021, compared with a $445 increase in weekly wages among other college graduates.
* Teachers earn 23.5% less than college graduates with comparable degrees. 
* Between 2010 and 2021, the difference between teacher wages and wages of other college graduates increased by 7.6%


With wages that aren’t competitive, it’s no wonder that states across the country are having trouble staffing classrooms. Young adults aren’t going to pursue teacher certification if the industry is notorious for low pay. In fact, the number of young people choosing to become teachers dropped 33% from 2010 to 2020.

And on top of stagnant wages, the pandemic hit teachers hard. Teachers have been at particular risk for infection from COVID-19, and they’ve become responsible for new duties – like online classes and trying to keep students masked and socially distant. That’s taken a toll on the workforce: From February 2020 to May 2022, 300,000 public-school teachers and other staff left the field –  a nearly 3% drop in the industry.

As the teacher shortage rages on, the best way to solve this crisis is to pay teachers more. It’s up to our elected officials to pass legislation that raises teacher pay, incentivizes former teachers to come back to the field, and inspires a new generation to get certified. We have to pay teachers what they’re worth if we want to uphold our education system.

Thanks for reading,

Team Civic Action

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