Your Salary Schedule

Your Pay Scale and You

Let's look at a teacher's pay scale.  Most teacher pay scales are going to look similar to what is seen here.  Understand that teacher pay can vary greatly with the location of school across the country or the world so it is important to keep in context the values based on your location.  This is the 2018-2019 pay scale of the largest school district in Central Ohio.  The pay schedule tells you some basic things.  How many many years of experience you have.  Your education level.  And what you will be compensated for the hours each week in front of the classroom as well as the hours you put in each morning, night and weekend.

You will do the same job as any other teacher in that district and get paid based on your experience.  We could go into the whole political debate on unions and how teachers pay should be merit-based but let's work with what we have.  It might be slightly different state to state or district to district, but this is what I know and I expect it what you have.

Year One

As a new teacher, you are going to start out on "step 0".  This means you have no years of teaching experience.  If you are going into your eleventh year teaching like I am then, you will on "step 10".  Basically, you are one step less than the year of teaching it is for you.  

Unless you have your masters degree you will start at what is considered the "base".  That's fine. You have a job which is great.

Unequal Pay

The frustrating thing looking at the pay scale is seeing that others are getting more than double the amount of pay for the same job.  This is due to them having more experience in teaching than you.  There is nothing you can do about it.  Sucks I know.  But if anything, have it act as hope for the riches to come.  

Slide to the Right

While you can't control which step you are on.  What you can control is your level of education.  In teaching, it's not how good you are at your job (this is not an endorsement for bad teaching but just a statement of the facts) but how much education you have.  Notice this doesn't say how smart you are.  As I am sure most can agree with, your level of intellect is not a direct relationship to intelligence (my physics teacher coming out).  

Notice even as a first-year teacher you can market yourself to get paid almost $9,000 more just from your education.  Now I understand rarely do teachers start with a Ph.D.  But this is not to take lightly how big of an impact your education can have on the wealth you can create.

Pay Scale images taken from:
https://www.ccsoh.us/cms/lib/OH01913306/Centricity/Domain/223/Teacher%20Salary%20Schedule%202018-19%20School%20Year.pdf