Teacher Salaries within the Workforce

While future pay rates have always been a popular discussion among students waiting for the bell to dismiss them from their 7th hour study hall, an even more (and slightly unusual) interesting topic tends to arise among our youth – that question being: “How much does my teacher make?”

Students understand the importance of money in a capitalist society, and with them wanting to learn more about how much their teacher makes doing their job, I would say most are pretty shocked (unless they desperately hate their AP Chemistry teacher) at the low amount they are paid. While often being overworked, limited in the number of days off, and stressed due to the amount of kids who take it as their personal duty to torment their teachers, I feel (and I know many others do as well) that teachers are severely underpaid.

In Missouri, it’s worse than most. Missouri, the grand gateway to the West, is actually a public school advocate’s nightmare when it comes to teacher starting salary, with it ranking 49th nationally. But that’s not all! After young teachers enter the work force, earning on average $40,682 for their first years teaching, their teaching counterparts in basically any other state make more than them, accounting for a teacher pay gap for those in Missouri of roughly 71 cents on the dollar. This salary, even for a job that is fully working 9 months out of the 12 annually, has awful pay for someone who is tasked with educating the future of our country before they grow up and enter the workforce. You might be thinking: “Oh well, the pay has to get better as they stay there, right?” and actually, you’re correct! But only by a slim margin because the average teacher salary for Missouri in general ranks 48th nationally with a whopping average of $55,132, according to the Missouri National Education Association, meaning it has increased by only one state in terms of good and fair pay for teachers/employers. While $55,132 can be considered decent in terms of pay, one has to keep two things in mind. The first being that the minimum living wage in Missouri is $59,079, which is higher than what teachers average by about $3000 and some change. The second thing to keep in mind is that almost every teacher is formally college educated with a bachelors, masters, masters +30, or a PhD in some form of subject/education. For the degree that they possess (that is necessary for their role mind you), the amount of pay given is quite a bit interesting.

This issue in fact does affect most of Missouri, but as all things, it does disproportionately harm certain areas, particularly ones with lower property taxes. Missouri’s education system relies on local funding, meaning that areas, such as the St. Louis Metro area and the Kansas City Metro area, with higher property tax, have better funded schools which then equates to better funded teacher salaries. In terms of state funding, only 30.6% of Missouri school funding comes from the state government while the national average is 47.1%, making Missouri, once again, rank 48th in state share of school funding. In terms of local communities, for Missouri public schools they provide 61.7% of school funding, far above the national average of 45.1%. What does this mean? Well it means that Missouri schools and their respective teachers from more rural areas with less individuals and lower property taxes have to suffer due to the lack of funding provided. The state relies on over 500 public school districts, and in rural areas, the "R" found in district names (e.g., Bowling Green R-I, Chillicothe R-II) actually stands for "reorganized". This is because these districts frequently battle tight property tax bases and rely heavily on supplemental state funding (which is already low) to remain operational, and as a last resort some of the school districts have to unfortunately consolidate simply to maintain funding standards.

This may seem obvious, but with a lack of funding and the broad overall awareness that the funding for Missouri public schools and their teachers are both disproportionate to what it should actually be, less teachers are entering the workforce within our state. According to the Prime Center on behalf of St. Louis University: first-year teachers are 70% more likely than the average teacher to leave Missouri public education with fewer and fewer teachers persisting through their early-career years, with only six in ten reaching their sixth year in Missouri public education. Attrition rates among new teachers have worsened almost every year over the last 10 years. This may seem inflated to you, but as someone who very recently left the public school system and has family members that dabble in the profession, it is unfortunately true. Teachers don’t want to return to a school that doesn’t value them or listen to their concerns, especially when they are severely underpaid while having a full degree that could be put to use at any other higher paying profession. Teachers aren’t going to magically stay in their teaching positions until something drastic actually changes and they get paid an adequate and fair wage. Missouri teachers and teachers in general are some of the smartest individuals, and with that, they’re smart enough to not get unfortunately screwed over by the state with an egregious lack of funding for their position.

To put it simply, this is an issue that impacts everyone even if you don’t have kids. These children are the future of our country and funding their education should be a top priority. This is a problem that we don’t want to get worse, which is why as a whole, Missouri Right for Education fights for high quality and evenly distributed public education all throughout Missouri, regardless of district location. If you want to help us on our mission, feel free to join us or sign up to volunteer at educatemo.org. We can’t achieve this mission alone, which is why we will take all the help we can get if it means better education for those within our lovely little state.