According to a study from the University of California, Berkeley, the US economy values pre-school teachers at between $8.63 and $20.99 per hour. This contrasts with, for instance, a minimum wage for fast food workers of $15 an hour in New York state, a figure that took 3 years to campaign for. Pre-school teachers have to keep the peace among children at various stages of development and need, provide meals, wipe noses and teach basic math and reading that will get the kids ready for school.
Pay for teachers of little children varies geographically, as you might expect — from an average of $8.63 in West Virginia to $12.47 in Massachusetts. But in general Kindergarten teachers earn far more than teachers of 3 or 4 year olds, even though there’s mounting evidence that the social, emotional and cognitive benefits of high-quality programs for the very young can last a lifetime. That means better trained teachers could make a huge difference in the lives of infants and toddlers.
“There’s a disconnect between our 21st century knowledge about early childhood teaching and these 20th century wages,” says Deborah Phillips, a professor at Georgetown University. “We desperately need educated young people to be working with young children, but they look at this job and say, ‘It’s a pathway to poverty. I can’t pay my student loans if I do this.” She went on to say: “The caliber of teachers is tied to their wages. Better-paid teachers and caregivers have lower turnover, can afford more training, and, not incidentally, are less stressed and preoccupied — not a small consideration when screaming tantrums are a normal part of the workday. Policymakers and the business community are all now turning to early childhood education as one of the best investments we can make, if you don’t pay adequate wages, you undermine the very thing that produces that value.” (based on an article on the NPR Website, 2015)
Of all the professionals maybe the most admirable are those who teach and train little children, hopefully instilling them with an understanding of how to play, make friends with other children, restrain their anger and human selfishness, and begin to be a disciplined human beings. It is a never-ending job, bringing up a child successfully, requiring huge amounts of time, patience and energy. Some people think that Since both parents started working outside the home they are not finding enough time to discipline and civilize their children – a bit of a generalisation, but if you are delegating the most important years of upbringing you should at least pay handsomely for it.
An Epicurean government would make teachers among the highest paid people in the country, and the teachers of the little ones the highest of all. Bankers would come within the bottom quartile.
The problem with funding higher teachers’ salaries, pre school or otherwise, is that in America, funding sources are decentralised. The money often comes from locally raised property taxes. This ensures that areas with high property prices get more funding that areas with lower values; in other words, rich children get more money than poor. The solution to this is obvious: centralise the revenue streams, and redistribute the money nationally on a per capita basis, so every child gets the same amount of money, regardless of background. The trouble is, lots of Americans are ideologically opposed to any attempt to federalise the education system. This is understandable- centralised systems can be inefficient and unaccountable. But when you have school districts and states with such vastly unequal sources of revenue, there has to be a national rebalancing.
On the whole I agree: pre school teachers ought to be paid more. But unless you significantly raise taxes (which would be politically unfeasible), this will have to be offset by cuts elsewhere. I know this sounds unpopular, but I would cut school sports funding if I were an American governor. Sports are lavished upon, and they are often accompanied by displays of unbridled nationalism and ostentatious militarism (que fighter jets and military parades at sports events.) If people want to exercise, they should pay for it themselves, like they do at university.