Teachers' Cost of Living Matters

This is so true! Teachers' cost of living truly does matter. So often in the American education system we want to compare average teacher salaries from state to state and city to city. This had impacted education for a long time. Many potential teachers choose to leave lower paying areas that could really use them or some decide to not teach at all! This is having a negative impact on our quality of teaching in America. We have to also consider that teachers salaries are based on their years experience and their educational degrees.

I have been a teacher for three years now in Rutherford County Schools. I have several times considered moving to a place with a higher salary. Then I very quickly realized that a lot of these higher paying areas have a greater cost of living. When I did the calculations moving to a place such as San Diego was actually going to make me have a lower total salary! I have seen salary have an effect on the teachers who choose to work at my school. Some of the teachers actually moved in to my county to teach because we paid more based on the cost of living for our area! So in this particular way it had a positive effect on my school! I thought it was very interesting to see that Memphis was on the list as being one of the higher paying salaries based on the pay and cost of living. "and in Memphis, Tenn., average annual salary is $45,108 and adjusted salary is $50, 797." (Georgiou, Moore, & Villarreal 2005) Now Memphis schools are not the easiest to work in but the adjusted salary would certainly make someone consider it!

Georgiou, D., Moore, M., & Villarreal, P. (2005). Teachers' Cost of Living Matters More. NCPA Publications. Retrieved June 25, 2010, from, http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba535