[giantg2]

Considering the average pay was about $65k, I'd say that most states seem to have decent pay. That's slightly higher than the average pay in the US, and significantly higher than the median.

My state has good teacher pay. I know someone working as a secondary ed biology teacher making a little more than I do as a dev (about $90k; both of us have masters).

[bastawhiz]

Average isn't a useful metric here because you'd be hard pressed to find an "average" school. Teacher salaries generally don't do a good job of tracking the cost of living. $65k might be a good salary for some parts of America, but if a bigger chunk of those teachers are in dense urban areas with high costs of living (see: the bay area) it's not good at all. It's also not useful if you lump public school teachers in with private school teachers.

[giantg2]

If it's not a useful metric, then it seems the article has no support for it's argument about teacher pay. If you also look in the article, it mentions that many of the states with higher costs of living also have significantly higher average pay, while states with lower cost of living have lower pay. It seems to generally track.

Now there could be localized areas that have pay problems, like the bay area. But are these widespread? Or is this a symptom of some underlying problem like locale specific policies or preferences (property taxes, housing prices/zoning/preferences, and the largest income inequality in the country)? Using other anecdotes, like in my area, there doesn't seem to be a problem.

So basically, if we can't use averages, what quantitative evidence is there that teacher pay being low is a widespread problem? Or is it possible that the audience on this forum is used to pay which falls in the top 5-10%, and thus skews the perception of what is "good" pay?

"Teacher salaries generally don't do a good job of tracking the cost of living."

You make this claim, but is there evidence to back that up? Because I don't see it in the article nor the comments.

[s1artibartfast]

>$65k might be a good salary for some parts of America, but if a bigger chunk of those teachers are in dense urban areas with high costs of living

Seems like the location of teachers would match the location of workers and children. It seems reasonable to compare the average worker salary to the average teacher's (or public teacher if that is your main interest)