【龙腾网】美国教师的工资真的过低吗?

正文翻译

原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.com 翻译：徐晃同学下盘并不稳 转载请注明出处

In the spring of 2018, thousands of public school teachers walked out of their classrooms in a half-dozen states, protesting low salaries, rising class sizes and cuts to school budgets that have prompted most teachers to buy their own classroom supplies.

2018年春天，六个州的数千名公立学校教师走出教室，抗议低工资、班级规模扩大和学校预算削减，这些都促使大多数教师购买自己的教室用品。

Additional strikes followed in 2019 in Los Angeles, Denver and Oakland. While these walkouts, which enjoyed much public support, were about more than teacher pay, stagnant teacher salaries were central issues.

2019年，洛杉矶、丹佛和奥克兰发生了更多罢工。尽管这些得到公众广泛支持的罢工不仅仅是关于教师工资，但教师工资停滞不前却是核心问题。

And political leaders have taken notice. For example, presidential hopeful Sen. Kamala Harris, a Democrat from California, has made boosting teacher salaries a part of her campaign. Her plan would allocate US$315 billion in federal funding over the next decade to increase pay for public school teachers and reward state and local governments for raising pay even higher, with the goal of eventually boosting teacher pay by an average of $13,500 per person. The proposal, which has been hailed as “the largest investment in teachers in American history” and criticized as a pitch for teacher union endorsements, would be paid for by as-yet unspecified increases in the estate tax.

政治领导人已经注意到了这一点。例如，加州民主党参议员、总统候选人卡玛拉哈里斯就把提高教师工资作为竞选活动的一部分。她的计划将在未来10年拨付3150亿美元的联邦资金，用于提高公立学校教师的工资，并奖励州和地方政府提高教师工资，最终目标是提高教师工资平均每人13500美元。该提议被誉为“美国历史上对教师的最大投资”，并被批评为争取教师工会的支持。

From my standpoint as an expert on
educational leadership and policy and as former assistant state superintendent for research and policy in the Michigan Department of Education, I see teachers as the most important resource in schools. Teachers’ impact on students persists into adulthood. Recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers in the nation’s public schools requires good working conditions, including competent and supportive leadership and a collegial environment. But pay matters.

作为一名教育领导和政策专家，以及前密歇根州教育部负责研究和政策的州长助理，我认为教师是学校最重要的资源。教师对学生的影响一直持续到他们成年。在全国公立学校招聘和留住高素质教师需要良好的工作条件，包括有能力和支持性的领导以及学术性环境。但是工资很重要。

Teacher salaries decline over time

教师的工资随着时间的推移而下降

Classroom teaching has never been a path to riches and, perhaps more than other professionals, teachers view their work more as a calling than as a way to make a good living. Still, teaching must compete with other occupations for talent. So how does teacher pay compare with the pay of other professions that require a similar education? By this comparison, teacher pay has been eroding for decades.

课堂教学从来就不是一条致富之路，或许与其他专业人士相比，教师更多地把他们的工作视为一种使命，而不是一种过上好日子的方式。然而，教学必须与其他职业竞争才能。那么，与其他需要类似教育背景的职业相比，教师的薪酬如何呢?相比之下，教师的工资几十年来一直在下降。

According to an Economic Policy Institute study, the teacher “wage penalty” – how much less teachers make than comparable workers – grew from 5.5% in 1979 to a record 18.7% in 2017.

经济政策研究所的一项研究显示，教师的“工资处罚”——教师的工资比同类工人少多少——从1979年的5.5%升至2017年创纪录的18.7%。

Teacher wage gaps vary widely from state to state, but in no state does teacher pay equal or exceed pay for other college graduates. And it’s no coincidence that the four states with the largest gaps – Arizona, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Colorado – saw teacher protests in 2018. In some states, teacher salaries have been so low that teachers have qualified for public assistance.

教师工资差距因州而异，但没有一个州的教师工资与其他大学毕业生持平或超过。而差距最大的四个州——亚利桑那州、北卡罗来纳州、俄克拉荷马州和科罗拉多州——在2018年遭遇了教师抗议，这并非巧合。在一些州，教师的工资如此之低，以至于教师有资格获得公共援助。

Fair comparisons?

是公平的比较吗?

How can teachers’ earnings be compared to those of non-teachers when teachers get summers off? The answer: Compare weekly wages. For example, a public school teacher in the U.S. with a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $980 per week between 2013 and 2017, while a comparable non-teaching college graduate averaged $1,326.

当教师放暑假时，教师的收入如何与非教师相比?答案是：比较一下周薪。例如，2013年至2017年，美国一名拥有学士学位的公立学校教师的平均周薪为980美元，而同等学历的非教学类大学毕业生的平均周薪为1326美元。

Some may argue that teachers, on average, work fewer hours per week than other college graduates. However, a leading teachers’ union says that teachers often work longer than their contracted work day.

有些人可能会说，老师平均每周工作的时间比其他大学毕业生少。然而，一个主要的教师工会表示，教师的工作时间通常比他们的合同规定的工作时间长。

What about teacher benefits? Instead of pay raises, are school districts giving their teachers generous benefit packages? No. While teacher benefits have accounted for a rising share of their total compensation as salaries have stalled and constitute a bigger share as compared with other professionals, this “benefit advantage” only partially offsets the teacher wage penalty.

教师福利呢?学区是否给予教师慷慨的福利待遇，而不是加薪?并不会。虽然教师福利在他们的总薪酬中所占的比例在不断上升，因为工资停滞不前，与其他专业人士相比，教师福利所占的比例更大，但这种“福利优势”只能部分抵消教师工资的损失。

Even teacher pension plans, often criticized as overly generous and costly to taxpayers, are now found to be inadequate in many states. In Massachusetts, for instance, teacher contributions to pensions plans will actually exceed their benefits no matter how long they stay in teaching.

甚至教师退休金计划，经常被批评为过于慷慨并且对于纳税人花费过多，现在发现在许多州是不够的。例如，在马萨诸塞州，教师对养老金计划的贡献实际上将超过他们的福利，无论他们在教师岗位上呆多久。

In 39 states, the average teacher salary declined 2010 and 2016 when you take inflation into account. And these declines were not the result of teacher turnover, with retiring and relatively well-paid baby boomers being replaced by entry-level millennials. A 2018 Brookings study found that teachers were more qualified in 2016 than in 2007. Teachers were older and more educated, with greater proportions holding master’s and doctoral degrees, the Brookings study found.

在39个州，如果将通货膨胀因素考虑在内，教师的平均工资在2010年和2016年有所下降。这些下降并不是教师流失的结果，退休和相对高薪的婴儿潮一代被入门级的千禧一代所取代。2018年布鲁金斯学会的一项研究发现，2016年教师的资质比2007年更高。布鲁金斯学会的研究发现，教师年龄更大，受教育程度更高，拥有硕士和博士学位的比例更高。

The pay gap gives rise to teacher shortages. These shortages do not show up as actual vacancies or empty classrooms. Rather, they appear as underqualified teachers – that is, more positions filled by teachers lacking full credentials and holding only temporary or “emergency” licenses. Shortages in math and science have been a chronic problem for public schools, as non-teaching options have been much more lucrative for candidates in these fields.

工资差距导致教师短缺。这些短缺并不表现为实际的空置或教室空置。相反，他们看起来是不合格的教师——也就是说，更多的职位是由没有完全资格证书、只持有临时或“紧急”执照的教师担任的。数学和科学的短缺一直是公立学校的一个长期问题，因为非教学选择对这些领域的候选人来说更有利可图。

Solving the teacher shortage problem, which afflicts every state to varying degrees, will require more than boosting teacher pay across the board. It will also take improving teachers’ working conditions, giving them more manageable class sizes and adding more support staff, such as psychologists, social workers, nurses and librarians. It will also take safe, well-maintained facilities and skilled principals who create the kind of school environments that make teachers want to stay.

教师短缺问题在不同程度上困扰着每个州，解决这个问题需要的不仅仅是全面提高教师工资。这还需要改善教师的工作条件，为他们提供更易于管理的班级规模，并增加更多的支持人员，如心理学家、社会工作者、护士和图书馆员。它还需要安全、维护良好的设施和技术娴熟的校长，他们创造了一种让教师愿意留下来的学校环境。

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原创翻译：龙腾网 http://www.ltaaa.com 翻译：徐晃同学下盘并不稳 转载请注明出处


Noah Jacobson-Goodhue
While I fully support teachers earning a living wage and being compensated for the very important work they do in shaping the future of our children, I am concerned about inequities I see in a related field. Mental health clinicians who often work in schools (and certainly collaborate frequently) do not generally enjoy the same wage and benefits afforded their teacher colleagues. I am a clinical social worker with a school endorsement and have seen first-hand the relative inequities.

尽管我全力支持教师们赚取基本生活工资，并为他们在塑造我们孩子未来方面所做的非常重要的工作获得报酬，但我对我在相关领域看到的不公平现象感到担忧。经常在学校工作(当然也经常合作)的精神卫生临床医生通常享受不到与他们的老师同事相同的工资和福利。我是一名得到学校认可的临床社会工作者，亲眼目睹了相关的不公平现象。

International tests of school-age kids PISA, PIRLS, and TIMSS, show American kids’ performance has also slightly declined in the same period, while kids in Finland, Vietnam, Thailand, and Estonia continuously improve.
Oh, I wonder if these things are related?

国际上对学龄儿童进行的PISA、PIRLS和TIMSS测试显示，同期美国儿童的表现也略有下降，而芬兰、越南、泰国和爱沙尼亚的儿童则在不断提高。
哦，我想知道这些事情是否相关?
(注：SAT是由美国大学委员会主办的一场考试，其成绩是世界各国高中生申请美国大学入学资格及奖学金的重要参考，它和ACT都被称为美国高考）

Jon Bayley（回复楼上）
I was a senior in 1979 and our teachers had just begun to organize. A strong union was probably the reason for wage growth. I can’t speak directly to the SAT scores but tests are just one layer of how well a student should be uated.
One other factor, parents. Parents who value education and take the time to support their cild’s education are able to get those students to a higher level of achievement.

1979年，我是一名大四学生，那时我们的老师刚刚开始组织活动。一个强大的教师工会可能是教师工资增长的原因。我不能直接说这与SAT成绩挂钩，但考试只是衡量一个学生应得到怎样评价的一个层面。
还有一个因素，父母。重视教育并花时间支持他们的儿童教育的父母，能够让这些学生取得更高水平的成就。

Jon Bayley
How can teachers’ earnings be compared to those of non-teachers when teachers get summers off?
Ah yes, the “summers off” mentality. Well being married to a teacher, I can say I used to have this feeling of “they only work 9 months a year”. But having witnessed how many hours my wife puts in during the school year, those summers off are well-deserved.

当教师放暑假时，教师的收入如何与非教师相比?
哦是的，“暑假休息”心态。我和一名老师结婚了，我曾经有过这样的感觉:“他们一年只工作9个月”。但是，我亲眼目睹我妻子在学年里花了多少时间后，那些暑假是值得的。

The article above also does not even discuss health benefits. Health benefits ought to be counted as income, but they are not. This also comes into play when comparing with other professions. How does a job with $36K for 9 months and 95% of health benefits paid compare to a job at $50K salary with only two or three weeks off and a 25% employee contribution to health insurance that only covers the individual?
It’s fine to talk about teachers compensation and whether they are appropriate. But this particular column does not fairly, accurately, or completely cover the subject. This piece looks a lot more like advocacy than “news.”

上面的文章甚至没有讨论健康益处。健康福利应该被算作收入，但事实并非如此。与其他职业相比，这一点也很重要。一份9个月3.6万美元、并支付95%健康福利的工作，与一份只有两三周假期、只为个人支付25%医疗保险的5万美元薪水的工作相比如何呢?
讨论教师的报酬和其是否合适是可以的。但这篇专栏文章并没有完全、准确地涵盖这个主题。这篇文章看起来更像是宣传而不是“新闻”。