The Indy Star has an article entitled Indiana teachers’ pay lags, reporting that Indiana’s teacher pay is 17th in the nation with an average salary of $47,808 which increased 1.7% from last year while the cost of living increased 3.1%. And before you get too excited by that $47k — which doesn’t sound like an awful salary — keep in mind that that includes teachers who have been there for 30 years. It’s not uncommon for starting teacher salaries to be somewhere in the $25 – $30k region.
It’s anectdotal, but I know of one teacher who had a couple of kids and a wife staying at home taking care of the kids who had to rely on government assistance in the form of the WIC program. So, it’s like Superintendent Reed said:
“If a young person is a science teacher and they can choose making $25,000 in Indiana or making $30,000 working somewhere else . . . they may decide to go somewhere else.”
Or, more likely, they might decide to opt out of teaching science altogether, going to work for the private sector or, horror of horrors, choosing to become school administrators who, I understand, actually get paid pretty well.
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