[tptacek]

Oak Park, IL is wealthy but not like Kennilworth wealthy, or Lincoln Park wealthy. OPRF, our public high school, has zero teachers making less than six figures.

Lane III (bachelor's degree) CPS teacher entry comp --- year 1 --- is over $80k/yr, including benefits (a defined-benefit pension) and 10 weeks vacation.

[germinalphrase]

The equivalent starting pay in my former district would by 37k/yr. I have relative living the Chicago suburbs that teaches. The difference in comp between her and I supports the numbers you have provided. I have also heard anecdotes about teachers that retired about 10 years ago and are provided 110+/yr on their pensions; however, the Illinois pension system seems to have crossed into "too big to fail" territory.

[tptacek]

My mental model for this is that teacher comp in large urban and suburban school districts is quite good, and that comp in rural school districts is quite bad, and everything else is a crap shoot.