By: Ted Dabrowski and John Klingner
With Chicago children kept out of classes for another day because of a Chicago Teachers Union walkout, now is a good time to remind Chicago parents just how much they pay city educators to teach their children.
A lot, it turns out.
At Wirepoints, we analyzed teacher contract data compiled by the National Council on Teacher Quality from the 148 biggest school districts across the 50 states. The NCTQ data “includes information on salaries for teachers throughout their careers, including starting, mid-career, and maximum salaries for teachers with a variety of education levels.”
We found that Chicago Public Schools pay teachers some of the highest, if not the highest, salaries of any of those districts after adjusting for cost-of-living differences between cities.
New Chicago teachers with a bachelor’s degree receive an annual salary of nearly $60,000 after adjusting for cost of living. That’s the highest starting salary among the 148 districts.
Rounding out the top five are Corona-Norco School District just outside Los Angeles ($58,831), San Francisco schools ($57,417), Conroe School District near Houston ($57,262), and Seattle Public Schools ($56,865).
By comparison, New York City pays new teachers $53,800 and Los Angeles pays just $48,400, again after factoring in the cost to live there.
The same high level of pay applies across the spectrum of Chicago teachers. No matter their level of education or experience, Windy City teachers get salaries that are at least the 5th-highest among the nation’s biggest districts.
A Chicago teacher with a bachelor’s degree and five years of service is paid nearly $68,348 after adjusting for cost of living, the 3rd-highest of any big district, behind only teachers in Boston ($76,754) and Detroit Public Schools ($68,548).
And Chicago teachers with master’s degrees and 10 years service are paid $89,507, more than any other big-district teachers except those working in Boston Public Schools ($103,140).
Parents might remember the last CTU strike in 2019 when the union rejected Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s initial “most generous” offer and demanded even more benefits. They got what they wanted. The average CPS teacher will get nearly $100,000 in salary by 2024 and the average 2nd-year teacher will earn $73,000 by that same year.
And of course all of these above salaries ignore the fact that Chicago teachers also receive generous pension benefits. The average career CPS educator retires at the age of 62 with a starting pension of $74,000 and can expect to collect more than $2.3 million over the course of her retirement.
And what do Chicago parents get in exchange for those high salaries and pensions? Below are the reading results from the Illinois Report Card for black, Hispanic and white CPS students. The bottom line is that the vast majority of students never read at grade level during their entire student career.
Note that those are all 2019 numbers – before the pandemic and remote learning made student scores even worse.
CPS and CTU have failed Chicago students for decades, but the disregard for families and students has hit new lows during COVID. How much longer will parents put up with this until they demand school choice en masse?
Read more about the Chicago Public Schools:
- Give in to the most militant teachers union in the country and this is what you get: Another walkout
- How can 84% of Chicago Public Schools students graduate when only 26% of 11th graders are proficient in reading, math?
- Families continue to flee Chicago Public Schools as it loses 14,000 students in 2022
- True inequality: In-class education at Chicago’s Catholic schools but remote learning at public schools
- Chicago leaders’ hypocritical stance on school choice
- Chicago teachers contract costs a record $1.5 billion, and that doesn’t even include pension costs
- Nine facts Chicago’s City Council ignored when passing the city’s 2021 budget
A set of state lawmakers want to extend CPS’ current school closing moratorium to February 1, 2027 – the same year CPS is set to transition to a fully-elected school board. That means schools like Manley High School, with capacity for more than 1,000 students but enrollment of just 78, can’t be closed for anther three years. The school spends $45,000 per student, but just 2.4% of students read at grade level.
Hopefully, all media will get the message, in Illinois, too.
Ted joined Tom Miller of WJPF to talk about Illinois’ highest-in-the-nation property taxes, why lawmakers don’t want to touch the tax’s cost drivers, just how much Illinoisans’ tax burden has grown over the decades, why Gov. Pritzker failed to meet his promise to reform property taxes, and more.
Wirepoints readers are going to go ballistic over this one! Let the fun begin.
“Almost half of teachers are thinking about leaving their jobs. Where does that leave America?” (Forbes)
OMG I hope thats a promise!
See if you can find that article if you want to be entertained. Copyright laws surely prohibit my posting it directly
It leaves Chicago children and parents and taxpayers in a much better place, if the in-person classrooms are taught by remote, proven- successful teaching programs such as Khan Academy. Children physically located in school rooms can be overseen/chaperoned by parents hired for the task (vetted for personal risk factors, and willing to ‘take the risk’ of Covid under current conditions). Pensions disappear as an issue. Students can perform tasks on their free laptops, as they frequently do now when CPS entitlement holders deign to show up for in-person classes. If school sports become elective, pay-to-play activities, even better. Then parents… Read more »
I’m not at all opposed to remote schooling for those who can handle it successfully. Many can’t simply because socialization is more important to them and/or they need a greater sense of individualized instruction. That means going at a slower level or designing a very different approach to teaching the goals at hand. The computerized sorts of educational instruction makes the implicit decision that all students can follow that approach with somewhat equal success. I suppose when the remote instruction allows some sort of feedback as it progresses the problem is ameliorated somewhat. If all of this instruction is done… Read more »
Teachers (govt workers in general) have the lowest turnover rates of any profession. While they might be thinking about it (who isn’t?), they rarely, if ever, follow through.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-teachers-havent-joined-the-great-resignation/
I said essentially the same thing in an earlier post. Many people are “planning” to do x, y and/or z, but the reality is most never have the priority of interest and energy for the follow-through required. It reminds me that “talk is cheap.” When something is done, then let me know. Otherwise its noise in the wind usually.
Reminds me about all the people that say they are going to leave the state of Illinois but never do.
Ironically, pensions make it harder for teachers to leave. They could quit after 10-15 years, but then they’re left with a crappy pension that gets hammered by inflation as it waits for them to officially retire decades later. Then there’s WEP. This is the same reason why the 6% end of career salary spike makes no sense. School district should freeze their last few years of salary (or no more than inflation adjusted). What are retiring teachers going to do in retaliation? If they quit, they forego full pension vesting and might have to wait a few years to avoid… Read more »
One good thing about the schools being shut down… If the schools are indoctrination centers, its best kids stay away. Time for parents to homeschool with the aid of a private online company, like Khan Academy a non profit with healthy donations. The only reason these teachers got this much leverage and control over everyone, even the mayor and your offspring. Is because parents expect teachers to teach, babysit, feed and raise their kids so feminists can go serve their corporate overlords. Women have abdicated their responsibility to their kids in a big way here, and fathers too, but mostly… Read more »
You just have to wonder if the parents of kids in CPS even care? If they did, they wouldn’t live in Chicago. Seriously, what kind of parent year after year exposes their kids to this city? Would you raise your kids there in 2022? Many would argue the people of Chicago deserve better from the CPS. Maybe, just maybe, they don’t.
In general you get no more than you demand, don’t you think?
Parents dont give a crap anymore, indoctrination centers raise and feed the kids.
There has been outmigration by black families over the last decade or so, but so many can’t afford to move. They’re stuck and they don’t have someone standing up for them. Black Lives Matter? Worthless Marxist organization and movement. Operation PUSH? A con game for decades. Parents have power in numbers. They just need to get organized and kick CPS, CTU, City Council and the mayor in their asses.
People live where they live because they want to. America was founded long after serfdom was abolished in western europe. Our 14th amendment abolished slavery. The 1965 civil rights act along with other law abolished redlining. No one is too poor to move or has no choice to stay where they live.
The biggest obstacle in some cases is finding a landlord that accepts Section 8 vouchers. But that again is still a choice – go work and pay full rent, or live cheap in a bad area because you want to live cheap in a bad area.
“People live where they live because they want to.” With all your complaining and vitriol here this seems to counter your general feelings about IL. Affix this statement to your bathroom mirror so you can remind yourself daily that at least one you said something worth reading and even memorizing.
I said it sucks living in IL. But at the end of the day, I want to live here because of family, income and other job issues. But that doesn’t mean I’m not planning to move!
I think many, many Illinois residents are trying to squeeze out another year or two before moving. It’s often due to kids nearing graduation, elderly parents in nursing homes, or being close to retirement.
Squeezing a little more time for sure, and, also waiting for the raging housing bubble everywhere except IL needs to deflate a little. Prices are currently tethered from reality and local incomes. Even the locals can’t afford to buy houses without exotic mortgages….One of the major benefits of leaving IL is that housing is supposed to be more affordable with lower real estate taxes. But with today’s pricing everywhere, you’re paying top dollar for a house and the low taxes don’t make up for it. QOL might be better but QOL is directly related to cost of housing. Five years… Read more »
I agree. My friend bought a modest home near Phoenix a few year back. Last year it went up $90K the year before almost $40K. Taxes are 0.8% of value. He said in Phoenix there are at least 2 dozen cranes around downtown and residential is booming even though it hits 115 degrees and above in summer. That could change if interest rates go up. Probably a bubble soon but a lot of people are escaping excessive regulations and taxation states. Problem is if you buy a home that may be overpriced you could lose a few hundred thousand dollars… Read more »
The great majority are forever planning to do x, y or z. Few do it. Talkers and complainers usually can be summed up as blah, blah, blah and seldom more.
go rub jesse snarkeys back teacher james,you bore me
Its probably because your mind snapped shut years. Dullard have no creative imagination.
i have a mind,my mind tells me youre all a bunch of fat lazy losers
Are sure you have a mind? If so, I’d like to have evidence of it. All you seem to give here are harsh, childishly witless crticisms. Show a hint of class so your mother can take some pride in you. So far her efforts seem to have brought forth nothing of the sort.
James – the statistics indicate that the exodus of productive people is accelerating. Again, and you may be saddled with your education major limitations, but do you ever speak to the real world economics taking place in Illinois right now? There are if you stretch some bright spots here and there but the financial data and out-migration data is very problematic. The data has nothing to do with talkers and complainers and other irrelevant emotional bromides. And it is not as you aver tilting at windmills to relate these facts but rather is in all its forms information, which is… Read more »
And its not just the middle class that’s leaving. Chicago and Illinois are losing the wealthy business owners and the entrepreneurs that pay for much of the public sector — the IRS data proves it.
https://wirepoints.org/leaving-illinois-another-wealthy-chicago-entrepreneur-votes-with-his-feet-wirepoints/
I agree with the generalized statements you have made re the current plight of IL and where it all leads. This state and the country itself seem incapable of polite, rigorous discussion and the old-fashioned idea of hoping for compromise. Instead, we now have fanciful thoughts as to the behind-the-scenes “real motivations” of the major politicians with only some probably credible. With that as a prologue it would seem we are nearing a state (literally and figuratively) of civil war where every man’s point of view is so entrenched that there is no desire even to consider compromise. That likely… Read more »
I understand the need of taxes/ involuntary payments. My problem is is that the government is not nearly as frugal with my hard earned dollars as I and most responsible taxpayers are and that we have no input in to how its squandered.
Our primary inputs are the media, our votes and our collective support of politically friendly candidates for public office. Short of armed insurrection what other methods do find as appropriate ways to infuence oolitical decision making?
As most in this country are politically right of center , I would go with security of the vote to start with.
great response
Not everyone lives where they want to, and yes, there are people too poor to move. You should take off your shoes and wear theirs. Please don’t be naive or elitist imagine you’re a single mother with three small kids, no car, job in the city, relying on the transit system to get around, no savings, trying to make ends meet and feed the children. Welcome to my household growing up. It took years for my mother to save enough so we could get out of the city, she could afford an apartment in the suburbs and have a car… Read more »
Oh your LIVED experience nonsense. You have no idea how I grew up. FYI I grew up pretty dang poor too but I’m not going to trade anonymous street cred. Then I went to university for 9 years after that and I was *really* poor. Borrowed student loans aren’t income – it’s debt – and there were no family support helping me out either. I also didn’t have three kids but with child support and government aid I would probably lived pretty well – food stamps pays hundreds a month and one or two baby daddy with a good job… Read more »
So elitist. While she couldn’t afford anything else, “she chose exactly where she wanted to live.” So untrue. You really have to wear someone else’s shoes to know.
Hahhaa I’m hardly an elite – the walk in my shoes doesn’t work with me because I’ve been there too. Nobody said life was going to be easy. Being poor really really sucked. I spent nearly 30 years being poor. It gave me the motivation to make sure I was never going to be poor again. Others, they just accept their lot in life and ask for freebies. That’s pretty much most of my family and they’re still poor, living off the SSI/SSDI, going to food pantries when the money runs out three weeks into the month, having poor credit… Read more »
Sounds like we had similar backgrounds. Glad you found the motivation to find a brighter path. Peace, brother.
That brighter path was paved with a lot of sacrifice, hard work, long nights, penny pinching, thrift and hard decisions. I may sound like a jerk (and in real life, I am kind of a jerk I’ve been told) but I’m not unsympathetic to the plight of my fellow humans. The modern world is far, far different from how our ancestors and people of all colors and races have to adapt. Even as recently as 100 years ago, most people lived in small towns, or on farms, and having 2 or 3 kids by 23 and being poor was the… Read more »
It’s the same argument for Joe Biden, JB, LL, and Kim Foxx… When you shoot for the toilet…
CHICAGO STUDENT HOSTAGE CRISIS – DAY 3 There’s an old adage in the private sector: Don’t confuse hard work with results. You may think teachers are working hard at educating Chicago students, but you would be mistaken for the most part. Look at Wirepoint’s numbers. The return on investment is a complete failure. And with CPS and the Mayor so woeful at negotiating, why would teachers bolt from the union? High wages, great benefits, no accountability, great job protection. All this fosters greed, selfishness, laziness and apathy, as in, the union tells me what to do and I do it.… Read more »
“Don’t confuse hard work with results.”
Very true, although a former co-worker said don’t confuse work work with making money, same idea though.
Just a question and observation. What would the compensation package be for anyone including administration in public schools if parents were required to pay tuition from the beginning of the public school system? Would it still be approx $28K per year in Chicago? Most people are clueless to the cost in Chicago for education. Very little if anything comes out of their own pockets to educate their children. If you were to do a random study of people and ask them what is the yearly cost most would not know. Now if they had to pay tuition they would know… Read more »
If it were not free parents would attend to their chidrens’ progress a great deal more with the likely result that in general it would improve. Even a partial payment of some amount would likely help.
There should also be a value stated of the future pension benefits on a yearly basis. So the $60,000 in yearly salary + (guess) $30,000 in future benefits. If you include the pension benefits it is tough to argue they are not well compensated relative to the average Chicago resident. They also work 50 weeks a year right? They should just dump the pension and pay teachers the $90,000 per year and let all these well educated people invest their own money. Teachers might jump at that potential since most of them have to be smart enough to realize their… Read more »
Almost literally no person takes a first job in their low-to-mid 20’s pretending to care in the least about their POSSIBLE pension benefits decades in the future. They want to know what their paycheck earnings will be now and—for the “long-term” thinkers—maybe next year. Then, maybe only roughly 50-60% of beginning teachers will stay long enough to ever get any pension all by teaching only a few years into the point where such rights are vested, and maybe only 1/3-to-1/2 that smaller number will ever get their supposed maximum pension by working long enough to be eligible for it. Your… Read more »
I’m hoping that Ted and John are concussed, or just computer generated writers. I didn’t just read something implying that CPS teachers are “highly” paid, right?
Below avg reading comprehension for teachers also I see
CPS schools are nothing more than the madrassas of the social justice warriors. The imams are highly compensated.
Sam – I thought the piece, accompanied by data, related that Chicago teachers are paid more relative to their peers in other districts. Whether they are highly paid is another matter. Such is the consequence of political emotionalism – it doesn’t make one appear very bright.
You’re right. The take-away on a superficial level is that the standard ought to be paying the least or certainly no more than average as the employer. Maybe so, but what kinds of people will apply and remain happy knowing that’s how little their efforts are appreciated? Now, I’ll ask it very simply to all who think that below average salaries generally lead to a better product: would you (1) apply to work for such an employer, and (2) would you likely stay there knowing your work-life is forever likely to be unappreciated in the financial sense? I wouldn’t.
Teachers and their unions have been saying that for years. All we have to show for it is spiraling salaries and wretched performance.
Okay, sure. But, would YOU apply under the conditions? If not, who of any presumed real value will? An employer who shows only modest interest in the quality of its work force will get the work force that results.
There are 858 other school districts and 49 other states in which a teacher can apply their trade. No CPS employee has ever taken an eternal blood oath to work for CPS. If it is so bad, why are they still there? Let’s be honest, teaching in Chicago is a convenience for many and carries a value far beyond compensation. If it didn’t, they would’ve left long ago. These same CPS teachers could drive 25 miles to the south suburbs like Harvey, whose enrollment is just as diverse as CPS, if not more. Lots of African American kids to teach… Read more »
Sure, CPS get a lot of “ warm bodies,” but isn’t really what they want to employ? All here who complain about low student academic performance should ponder why that’s the case. Low or even about-average salaries won’t do much in the way of attracting superior talent.
That is probably true. But as you have pointed out, in many/most cases, the students themselves are the primary drivers of the outcomes. So how does it make sense to keep increasing teacher compensation, when the statistics show it does not bring better results? I don’t think anybody can seriously dispute the horrendous test scores.
Raising compensation does, of course, bring better results to the teachers and the unions.
Sam – you might be a product of CPS. They actually didn’t write that. The article references that they are paid some of the highest salaries of any big district in the nation…relative to other teachers. Teachers generally are not “highly paid”; no arugment there. The point is that CPS teachers are some of the most highly paid teachers in the nation with some of the absolute worst results.
Teachers are not indentured, they can leave whenever they want. To be honest, the time now is ideal to look elsewhere. There are job opportunities with high pay and advancement possibilities everywhere. Amazon and WeatherTech are hiring along I-55. However they require attendance and accomplishment.
In CPS, graduates roll off the assembly line like the old YUGO automobile.
Amazon pay also amounts to only about half of what a starting CPS teacher gets. I’d be surprised if WeatherTech pays much more than that. But now would be a good time for some teachers to start independent schools. Unfortunately, the remaining CPS students are mostly from families who couldn’t afford to fund such an effort. Maybe some foundations could help?
Starting pay may be smaller and hours may be longer, but there is always opportunity for advancement either within a company or elsewhere. Good or great employees do get noticed. And you cannot put a price on your mental health.
Masters degrees from diploma mills like National Louis don’t improve the product either.
That’s where the interest given in who is hired becomes ever more crucial. If you want the best applicant all kinds of criteria should apply to that with the appropriate incentives.
For 9 month per year job, highly compensated, yes. Compare it to a nurse who saves lives or a cop who risks his life, its pretty cushy.
Leonardo DeCaprio makes more money than I do, so I should have some abiding combination of envy and hatred for him. But, guess what—I don’t. Life doesn’t bring equality guarantees with it. Some do better and some do worse, and no amount of crying, yelling or foot-stomping will change that. If you do the comparison thing at all do so only for people having the SAME TYPE of job you do, Otherwise you have to dream up reasons why you are short-changed beyond the immediate logic necessary for a good comparison.
Leonardo DiCaprio has cannot compel anyone to pay him a dime. Public union members’ compensation is derived 100% from compelling fellow citizens to pay via taxation. The analogy doesn’t work here.
It doesn’t have to work perfectly; analogies seldom do. The simple point is that you don’t need to to hate or envy your fellow man because he has luck, talents, education, money or anything else you don’t. Comparing one profession to another and saying their salaries should be such-and-such is a wasted effort. Find your own reasons for choosing to be a happy person rather than a spiteful one. Life has you no obligation to meet your sense of fairness. I think you may need another Prozac to deal with that reality.
You misunderstand if you think that I (and presumably others on here) are simply envious of the union members salaries and benefits. I do not begrudge others their success; on the contrary, as an ardent believer in freedom and capitalism, I celebrate the accomplishment. I do not celebrate obtaining unearned benefits by being the first in line at the public trough. In other words, it is not what the public sector workers have, it’s how they got it. Do you really believe that public sector workers only have more luck, talent, and education? Or is it that they have far… Read more »
I believe any poker game you enter in life has its written rules and its unwritten “rules.” It behooves any such player to excel at knowing all of them or suffer the consequences. Luck and dedication play their roles always, but we all need to be savvy as well if we hope to have success.