by Pauline Vu, Stateline.org Staff Writer

In 40 states, public school teachers fail to make as much as workers in comparable professions, such as reporters and insurance underwriters, according to a new report by the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center (EPE). Nationwide, teachers earn only 88 cents for every dollar paid to workers in equivalent jobs.

These findings were a new feature of the 12th annual Quality Counts¹ report, published by trade newspaper Education Week, which is published by EPE. The report, released Wednesday (Jan. 9), grades states in six categories: teacher policies; standards, assessments and accountability; school funding; K-12 achievement; school transition and alignment policies; and a child’s chances for success in life.

Across these categories, a trio of Northeast states led the pack: Maryland, Massachusetts and New York. At the other end of the scale, the District of Columbia and five states barely avoided failing grades: Idaho, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada and Oregon.

The main focus of this year’s report is states’ teaching policies. States are ranked on factors such as how stringent their license requirements are, whether they provide mentoring programs for new teachers or incentives to teach in hard-to-staff subjects and schools, and working conditions such as class size and the level of school violence.

This year’s report also includes a new analysis comparing teacher pay to equivalent jobs such as museum curators, registered nurses and accounting. Teacher pay was found to be deficient in 40 states.

Read the full report at stateline.org

Notes

¹ See “Quality Counts 2008: Tapping into Teaching,” Education Week.