Most teachers who leave their jobs don't earn more eight years later, reports Sarah D. Sparks in Education Week. Most who left a large urban district made about $10,000 less per year, on average, than teachers who had stayed with the district, concludes a new study.
"Despite persistent concerns that educators are leaving the field to obtain higher incomes elsewhere, we find that the median employed leaver makes less than before they left teaching and their earnings do not recover nearly a decade after exit," researchers wrote. Those who stayed in education earned more than those who switched fields.
The median pay for public school teachers today is about $61,000 per year for the elementary grades and about $1,000 more for secondary grades -- significantly less than those with similar education working in other fields, according to federal data.
Nearly 60 percent of the teachers who left the district took other education jobs. Those who chose to leave education averaged less than $40,000 seven years later, writes Sparks.
That doesn't include the 20 percent who were not in the workforce eight years later: Many were raising children, especially women married to high-earning men.
"Leaving education entirely did pay off in a big way for about 10 percent of early-career teachers, who as much as doubled their salary within four years," she writes. "Teachers of science, technology, engineering, and math courses made upwards of $100,000 within a few years of leaving education."
The study looked at teachers in a high-poverty, high-minority district that paid teachers more than the state average. Still, 17 percent of teachers left, on average, each year.