While families are excited about the start of school, many teachers are returning to longer work hours and lower average base pay. All of this affects teachers, and a recent report found that their well-being continues to be worse than that of similar working adults—a consistent pattern since 2021.
The RAND State of the Teacher Survey found that managing student behavior, low salary and administrative work outside of teaching were the top-ranked sources of stress for teachers in 2024.
Teachers reported working an average of 53 hours per week; 15 of these hours—or roughly one-quarter of their working hours—were outside of their contracts. This compares to 44 hours per week for similar working adults. Only 36 percent of teachers said their base pay was adequate, compared with 51 percent of similar working adults.
“This is RAND’s fourth consecutive year collecting data that raises concerns about high stress and low pay in the teacher workforce,” explained Sy Doan, lead author of the report and a policy researcher at nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND.
“Although teacher well-being seems to have stabilized at pre-pandemic levels, our data raise questions about the sustainability of the profession for Black teachers and female teachers in particular.”
In his book, “A Torchlight for America,” the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan wrote about the important roles of teachers in society. In the chapter, “Fixing the Public School System,” under the section “Honor the Profession of Teaching,” the Minister writes,
“Teachers are the stewards of the proper cultivation of the people. Without teachers, we have an underdeveloped people. With an underdeveloped people, we set the stage for a backward society, which we are witnessing in the present-day reversal of America as a world power.”
Nearly 1,500 public K–12 teachers participated in the RAND survey. It found nearly a quarter of them said they have difficulty coping with the stress of their job. Sixty percent were burned out and nearly that many said the stress and disappointments of teaching were not worth it. Those numbers have budged little since the difficult days of schooling during COVID.
Nearly nine percent of U.S. teachers are Black while Black students make up 15 percent of public school children, but those numbers look different across the country. According to the Black Teacher Collaborative, Georgia has 646,675 Black students accounting for almost 40 percent of the state population.
Georgia is in the top 25 percentile for the number of Black students in the country. Georgia has 28,935 Black teachers accounting for almost 25 percent of all teachers in Georgia and 11.4 percent of all Black teachers across the country. Lastly, Georgia also has the second-highest number of Black teachers in the country, behind Texas.
The RAND Teacher Survey found that Black teachers reported working significantly more hours per week, on average, and were less likely to report satisfaction with their weekly working hours than their peers.
They were also less likely to say their base pay was adequate than their peers, to report significantly lower base pay, and more likely to say they intended to leave their job. One major reason, pay.
The average Black teacher reported making a base salary of around $65,000. The average White or Hispanic teacher made around $70,000. However, the difference could not be explained by years of experience or level of education, researchers found.
“Teachers are leaving the profession because they feel like they are not compensated fairly for the job that teachers do,” D.C. High School Special Education Teacher Simon Miller told The Final Call.
“I know a lot of people, when they think of teachers, they think of all the holidays they get off, and having summers off. They don’t realize that a majority of teachers spend their own money to get school supplies. It’s not a typical, 9-to-5 job. A number of teachers are grading papers at home, fixing lessons, tweaking lessons, and creating lessons at home.”
“The education industry is very different from other industries that offer stable 9-to-5 work days. A number of teachers feel like they can have a better quality of life by going to another industry where they are compensated for what they do and are better appreciated.
Teachers deal with a lot of stuff. After COVID, students returned lacking a number of social skills. Restorative justice practices were implemented. Student discipline and their consequences weren’t as high for egregious behavior. Teachers didn’t feel that they were even being respected.”
COVID showed many the stressors of teaching. When families were forced to stay at home and support the education of their children learning online parents and politicians saw first-hand what many teachers have been complaining about for years.
“Teachers heard from the community things like, ‘I don’t know how teachers do it.’ ‘Teachers need to be the highest paid industry in America because they do it all day, every day.’ However, their compensation does not reflect their value.
Teachers are considered by some to be modern-day dictators that have their hands on developing future generations of not only the country, but the world. This explains why teachers are leaving.
They don’t feel that they’re being fully compensated for the job that they do. Not only that, but they get a high level of disrespect from community members, politicians, parents, and sometimes students,” Mr. Miller said.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 76 percent of teachers are female. Of that number close to seven percent are Black, nine percent are Latino.
The RAND Survey found that female teachers reported significantly higher rates of frequent job-related stress and burnout than male teachers, a consistent pattern since 2021. Female teachers also reported significantly lower base pay than their male peers but no differences in the number of hours they work per week.
According to the survey, the pay gap was even more glaring for female teachers. Their average salary was around $68,000. The average male teacher made nearly $10,000 more. Among middle school teachers, the gap was closer to $16,000. Female teachers also reported much higher rates of stress and burnout than did their male colleagues.
“In many ways teaching is often like mothering,” D.C. elementary school teacher Morgan Taylor told The Final Call. “Especially for the elementary years. I taught kindergarten and had to deal with emotional issues from children unprepared for school.
The tears and the tantrums come every year. Teachers also have to face social issues like drug addiction, poverty, custody issues and more. I’ve picked up students from their home to ensure they got to school on time.
I’ve arrived early to do girls’ hair. These are the unspoken things public school teachers have to deal with. Things we are not compensated for but do from our hearts.”
While low pay was a major stressor, the survey found managing student behavior was the most stressful part of a teacher’s job. Low pay came in second, followed by administrative work like grading papers and teacher evaluations. A quarter of the teachers said their top stressor was helping students make up the learning they lost to COVID.
Minister Farrakhan also stressed the importance of paying teachers. “What are we going to do about a country that can give a man millions of dollars to throw a ball into a hoop and will not pay an educator an adequate salary?
What does this say about our understanding of education and its importance? We have serious misplacement of values and priorities that needs to be corrected,” the Minister wrote in “A Torchlight for America.”
“Teachers must be compensated commensurate with their role in society. We have to restore honor among those who choose and are employed in this noble profession,” Minister Farrakhan wrote.—Nisa Islam Muhammad, Staff Writer
