Teacher pay has dramatically increased since I was a kid. The old idea that teacher pay is poor is outdated. While it depends to some extent where one lives, public sector pay is very competitive these days. In the case of teachers, I'm fine with it, and agree with the importance of the profession. My brother and daughter are teachers. I don't want to go back to when the pay was poor. But I'm not sure people understand how much it has improved.
First year teachers in the Lincoln Public Schools, with a bachelor's degree, start in the upper 40's on base salary, for a 9.5 month work year. The benefit package is incredibly generous, and beats any private sector job of which I am aware. A first year principal in Lincoln makes $130,000 plus the lucrative benefits. Assistant principals are knocking down 6 figures. My son in the private sector, 2 years older than his sister who is a teacher, works nearly double her hours, year round, and makes $15,000 less, without nearly the amount of benefits. Teachers and administrators make pretty good scratch these days.
I've been teaching for 20+ years at a wide range of schools from excellent to awful, from on the reservation to rural white to overseas in 3 countries: my salary now is $43,000. Am I well paid? I can make more elsewhere, so, yes, location is the chief factor in pay, but when you factor in cost of living, quality of teaching experience, etc., there's absolutely no comparison as to where is the best place to be a teacher: overseas. In most mediocre paying teaching jobs overseas, the pay is equivalent to what teachers get in America, except for the following: 1) no taxes; 2) better insurance and perks; 3) housing is covered; 4) most schools provide a reasonable moving allowance and round-trip tickets for the entire family once per year back home. I'm back teaching in South Dakota because my wife and I have 3 young children, my parents' health had been failing, and we wanted both grandkids and grandparents to have some time with each other. There is no other way that we would be making the financial sacrifices that we are to be here. Our house (which is all that we could afford) is smaller than the apartments that were provided for us overseas.
The 9 1/2 month work-year is also a load of crap. We have to keep taking classes forever to keep up our certification, and those rarely are paid for by schools. Add in early starts for fall sports practices, summer workouts, etc., and it's not exactly lying next to the pool sipping a Mai Tai. Since my family will barely see me from the beginning of August through the end of football, I have to get everything done for the fall during the summer.
Understand, I have a business degree with a heavy emphasis in accounting and economics, and I've taught advanced level economics for much of my teaching career: I understand tradeoffs, costs and benefits, etc. As long as there are people in rural and suburban areas who make enough for their whole family, you'll have their spouses who are often willing to work for relatively low wages as nurses, nurse's aids, teachers, teacher's aids, etc. Still, there's already a shortage for teachers in key areas, and those shortages tend to be worse at the worst schools. Look at your state's listing of the schools with the worst standarized test scores in reading and math, and then look at the teacher openings that are available for those schools. Those schools tend to have the worst discipline problems, no family support systems, a poor sense of community, and lots of special needs children. The best teachers usually don't want to work there. If the high school in Suburbia Affluenza is doing just fine, you may want to keep in mind that those students will be increasingly paying more and more to support those other students who aren't developing any job skills, yet will still demand (and get) an ever-growing piece of the entitlements pie. A majority of the students that I inherited this year literally cannot do multiplication tables, yet they are "multiplying." Teenage pregnancy rates are down almost everywhere, except among those kids who will not actually do much to raise or provide for their kids.
Finally, you mentioned principals and their pay. Principals are paid VERY well--too well paid, in fact. Almost any decent teacher figures out very quickly that the best way to make more money is to be a principal, and since we have to take more classes anyway, probably 50% or more of senior teachers have or are close to having the necessary credentials to be a principal. Who do you hire then? Usually, they hire some of the best teachers ... who often aren't very good administrators. Have you ever heard the expression that employees usually don't quit their jobs, they quit their bosses? I worked in a variety of fields before, during, and after college, and I've never seen a more sorry group of leaders (by percentage) than school principals. A trained monkey could pass the classes to get the degree, so that's no barrier to entry. The best way to get hired as a principal is a) know someone who can help get you hired, b) come across as confident, assertive, and friendly. Neither of those do much to predict a person who's actually qualified for the job. If you find a principal who is good at team-building with the staff, holds the line with students and parents, is above reproach as far as behavior, and is at least reasonably good at communicating and problem-solving, whatever that person is getting paid, make sure that it's enough to keep them from leaving. On the other end, there are an endless supply of spineless empty-suits in principal offices who do more harm than good and could be eliminated without hurting the school.
Lest you think I'm biased for one side, be warned that you do NOT want to get me started on the poor quality and standards that we accept for teachers, or the joke that is the curriculum that leads to a diploma in a teacher-education field. If a teacher can't do multiplication tables, write coherent paragraphs, and identify a majority of U.S. states on a blank map, they probably shouldn't be teaching at any level. You'd be horrified to know how many can't do those things. You can't teach what you don't know, so I keep having students who can't multiply 6x7 without a calculator, who don't know that a sentence needs a subject and a verb, and who live in southeastern South Dakota, yet can't find Iowa or Nebraska on a blank map of the Upper Midwest. Those are true stories, by the way, at multiple schools, including one that had just been named #1 in the state based on standardized test scores.
