Out of all the states, the Cowboy State has the lowest teacher wage penalty at .2%, which means teachers pay rates to stay almost equal with all other professions, according to BuckRail.

There was a study done by the Economic Policy Institue, they indicated that the average weekly wages of public teachers (adjusted for inflation) has decreased.  But, the weekly wages for a college graduate has risen in the past two decades.

The teacher weekly wage penalty reached an all-time high in 2018 with 21.4%. Which is causing fewer and fewer people wanting to be teachers. In return, teacher shortages and overcrowded classrooms.

“The teacher shortage is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought, García and Weiss reported to Economic Policy Institute. “A shortage of teachers harms students, teachers, and the public education system as a whole. Lack of sufficient, qualified teachers and staff instability threaten students’ ability to learn and reduce teachers’ effectiveness, and high teacher turnover consumes economic resources that could be better deployed elsewhere. The teacher shortage makes it more difficult to build a solid reputation for teaching and to professionalize it, which further contributes to perpetuating the shortage.”

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