Why are teachers so under paid.?

Answer 1

Part of low teacher pay has to do with the low value given to teaching, but much of it is because of the sheer number of teachers and the enormous amount of money it would take to make a significant increase in their pay.

Let's say that we want to give every teacher in the U.S. a $1,000 raise. The Census Bureau estimates that there are 6.8 million teachers in the U.S. So, that $1,000 raise would cost approximately 6.8 Billion dollars. That's a lot of money for a relatively insignificant increase in each individual teacher's income.

For each $1,000 we propose to raise teacher's salaries, it will cost almost 7 billion dollars. For each $1,000.
$7 billion here and $7 billion there and pretty soon we're talkin' real money. You wanna give every teacher a $10,000 raise? You gotta come up with $70 billion. Every year. $70 billion.

For perspective, the federal budget for 2007 is $2.8 trillion, give or take a few billion. A $4,000 raise for every teacher in the U.S. would cost approximately $28 billion, equal to about 1% of the total federal budget. Yeah, teacher's salaries are paid by local taxes, not the federal government, but that number gives us an idea of what $7 billion means relative to other government spending.

One of the reason teachers aren't paid more:
there's so darn many of them.

Answer 2

I wish I knew, so I could help to fix it!

My best guess is that it's because American's under-value education. No one gets paid well or gets famous for being smart.

Answer 3

lol i know its a rip off so they take there anger on students.