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CHAPTER 2: The Teaching Profession
Figure 2.1
Occupations of Great Prestige: The Public’s Perception
88% Doctors 78% Military Officers 76% Firefighters 76% Scientists 69% Engineers 66% Police Officers 60% Teachers 27% Real Estate Brokers 0
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Source: “Doctors, Military Officers, Firefighters, and Scientists Seen as Among America’s Most Prestigious Occupations,” The Harris Poll, 2014 (Harris Interactive, Inc., September 10, 2014) www.harrisinteractive .com/vault/Harris%20Poll%2085%20-%20Prestigious%20Occupations_9.10.2014.pdf.
(reading, writing, and speaking), and, most of all, you must work effectively with many kinds of people—children, adolescents, parents, colleagues, and superiors. Additional studies remind us that the work of teachers is multidimensional. However, society accords higher prestige (and, of course, higher pay) to professionals such as physicians, lawyers, and engineers, mainly because they must deal with information generally regarded as more abstract (complex) and because these fields currently require more rigorous academic preparation and licensure.18 Although teachers’ salaries since 1930 have increased more than those of the average manufacturing-industry worker (as discussed in the previous chapter), teacher pay remains lower, and the gap has grown recently, than that of the comparable college graduate, such as an architect, registered nurse, accountant, or occupational therapist.19 In a 2014 study, researchers found that the average weekly pay of public-school teachers was nearly 13.2 percent below that of similar nonteacher, college-educated workers, and “[a]n analysis of trends in weekly earnings shows that public-school teachers in 2006 earned 15 percent lower weekly earnings than comparable workers[.]”20 Education officials and researchers have suggested that substantially raising the salaries of teachers may be the way to enhance the profession’s prestige and thus
Brian Rowan, “Comparing Teachers’ Work with Work in Other Occupations,” Educational Researcher (1994), pp. 4–17; and Anthony Milanowski, Using Occupational Characteristics Information for O*NET to Identify Occupations for Compensation Comparisons with K–12 Teaching (Madison, WI: Wisconsin Center for Education Research, June 2008). 19 Steven L. Denlinger, “A Look at the Problem of Teacher Deficits,” Clearing House (January– February 2002), pp. 116–117; and Sylvia A. Allegretto, Sean P. Corcoran, and Lawrence Mishel, How Does Teacher Pay Compare? (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, 2004). 20 John M. Krieg, “Book Review—How Does Teacher Pay Compare?” Economics of Education Review (2007), pp. 265–266; and Sylvia A. Allegretto, Teacher Pay Penalty (November 20, 2014) at www .epi.org/publication/teacher-pay-penalty/. 18
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