The United States Federal Government should substantially increase funding students by increasing teacher pay by twelve thousand dollars with a .322 tax on gasoline (per gallon) Teachers lack the sufficient payment to live and provide for their students. If teacher salaries increased you will see an increase in economic growth, decrease poverty, and have better quality teachers.
As of right now, President Donald Trump and Betsy DeVos are planning to cut federal spending from the Department of Education. Scott Sargrad says, “by more than thirteen percent and slash overall funding by almost $11 billion, including eliminating $2.1 billion in funding for teacher professional development and support, which could pay the salaries of more than 35,000 teachers, and $1.2 billion for after-school programs, which support working families and serve 1.6 million students.” This budget cut plan is hoping to destroy funding for the arts, bullying prevention, history, civics, along with science, technology, engineering, and math programs (STEM). These programs are the heart and soul to building a child’s education. Imagine if children did not know how to do simple math; this would result in these children growing up not knowing how to add change together to pay for a gallon of milk or worse- their taxes. “Instead, this money would be spent on toll roads, rather than something useful to our society.” This contributes to the amount of programs and jobs cut.
President Trump and Betsy DeVos have yet to enact this budget cut, but the only evidence supporting claims that these cuts will not pass are all speculation. The Department of Education was established by President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan is the only President since to go through with educational budget cuts of any kind even with an opposing party controlling the House and Senate. If Ronald Reagan can do it, Donald Trump can do it too. Evidently, these budget cuts would have extreme turbulence on our economy. Ilana Kowarski writes “the EPI along with others argues that budget cuts will damage the economy further by giving teachers less spending power due to their budget reduction and students less earning power. This results in students being ill prepared to work other jobs like attorneys. One of the first things to go with budget cuts is the already small discretionary fund teachers acquire at the beginning of the year,” which is why these budget cuts would hurt teachers. Most of the time this money is used for photocopies, posters, along with other learning tools beneficial to those students. Another example you can see in schools all over are outdated textbooks. Textbooks aren’t cheap but with these budget cuts schools will be forced to rethink their budget choices to buy updated versions of different texts. I interviewed an administrator from my high school about our budget. He told me our school spends over $200,000 every two years on things for our school. Our district budget is half a million dollars. This past summer around $160,000 were spent initially on CTE textbooks to finally replace twelve to thirteen year old textbooks.
Let’s cut to the chase: teachers are not being paid enough. On average, a teacher’s starting salary is thirty-nine thousand dollars. According to a novel written by Dana Goldstein, “teacher salaries in South Korea are $55,000 to $155,000 which puts South Korean teachers at an engineer or doctorate level of pay. The salary that teachers are earning now is almost absurd compared to that of teachers in Germany that earn up to $46,000 to 60,000, and Luxembourg where teachers are expected to make more on their first day than teachers in the United States hope to make throughout their entire career.”
A report written by the U. S Department of Education, in 2012 states, “there were approximately 3,385,200 teachers in the United States which means we have a significant higher number in 2018.” In order to increase teacher’s pay the United States Federal Government’s Department of Education will increase teacher pay by twelve thousand dollars to increase education funding by taxing a .322-cent tax on gasoline. (U.S. Energy Information Administration, Independent Statistics and Analysis) “In 2016, about 143.37 billion gallons (or about 3.41 billion barrels) of finished motor gasoline were consumed in the United States, a daily average of about 391.73 million gallons (or about 9.33 million barrels per day).” This was the largest amount of annual motor gasoline consumption on record. This .322-cent tax on gasoline would increase federal revenue by 46.1 billion dollars. The amount of money needed to increase teacher salaries by 12,000 dollars for every teacher in the US is 40.6 billion dollars. The .322-cent tax on gasoline is sufficient to generate funding since this is less than penny and would end up paying all teachers a total of 41.6 billion dollars. This means we would have $1 billion extra to go towards anything in the education sector that needs more funding.
Many teachers work out of school office hours then go home with barely any money left to spend on things they wish for. A financial hurdle for teachers are materials for their students and their classroom. Many pay for their own schooling and professional training, but over ninety-two percent pay for supplies for their own students out of their own pocket. I sat down and interviewed a first year teacher who was hired this past year. Dustin Hurley makes $49,000, before tax cuts. After tax cuts he takes home roughly $36,000 and spends up to $1,350 a week. “I would love a permanent raise in teacher salary, without a doubt. I often do use my pay to buy things for my classroom. I would estimate that I have spent close to $500 on my classroom and $750 on things for the debate team,” he said.
But teachers that are currently in the profession (and have been for twenty years or more) know they won’t ever get a significant salary increase and they make this known to the future generations. Students in college or high school pave the way for a career as a teacher, however, when they realize being a teacher does not pay much they back track and go into a different field, one they are not as passionate about. This results in quality teachers walking away invite inadequate teachers to come teach. Ninive Calegari, is a former classroom teacher who also co-authored Teachers Have it Easy; the Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers. Ninive writes about different cases where teachers are protesting their low pay by wearing jeans to work. Many teachers end up having to work second jobs just to make ends meet. However, if teacher salary was increased it would improve the quality of teachers hired. An article from the Atlantic states, “Money was one of several factors that determined Sean True’s decision to leave his teaching position for a job as the director of curriculum development for the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District in California.” This is just one teacher out of millions more. But experts say raising teacher salary could help improve the profession’s reputation by encouraging higher-achieving college students to continue to pursue their true passion for teaching.
Increasing teacher pay will not only improve education but the lives of many across the board. If we decide to cut the education budget we will only be hurting ourselves. By enlarging teacher pay we have the potential to see more outstanding teachers and a significant increase in test scores; with these high test scores more students will be able to go to college and graduate with a four-year degree plan under their belt. This degree will earn them well paying jobs which leads to a dramatic rise in the economy.