Why not pay teachers $100,000 a year?

Four years after the onset of the pandemic, students across the country are still struggling. Test scores are falling. Absenteeism is rising. Meanwhile, about 44 percent of U.S. schools face a teacher shortage.

If we’re serious about hanging on to capable educators, and attracting new ones, we should start treating them like true professionals. And one place to begin is compensation.

Why not pay America’s teachers a minimum salary of $100,000 a year?

The average annual salary for public school teachers during 2021-2022 was $66,397, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, a nearly 8 percent pay cut, in inflation-adjusted terms, from a decade ago. Salary isn’t the only reason educators exit the profession. But whether they work in suburban New York or rural Mississippi, teachers earn significantly less than they could in other fields.

Raising teacher pay is also the rare 2024 policy proposal whose support spans the ideological divide.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation: If it requires about $35,000 per teacher just to raise average pay to six figures, and the United States employs more than 3 million public school teachers, the total cost would be north of $100 billion. Are you feeling defibrillated?

That’s why this hefty pay raise comes with two strings attached.

First, a longer school year.

Second, greater accountability. Many teachers are excellent; some are heroic. But any parent knows that a few just aren’t up to the job.

One mark of a winning idea is that it offers something for everyone to hate.

Higher taxes would enrage conservatives. Reduced job security for public employees would infuriate liberals. So far, so good!

But many complicated issues remain to be worked out. How should we adjust for differences in cost of living? How would the pay scale evolve? What are the fairest ways to evaluate teachers?

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