Opinion on public teacher pay is bimodal: either teachers are overpaid or they are underpaid.

According to this Forbes article, teachers on average are actually paid a fair, appropriate amount.

Jeffery Dorfman of Forbes investigates:

Low Teacher Pay And High Teacher Pay Are Both Myths

Google “low teacher pay,” “teachers paid too much,” or any other similar variation and you will find tens of millions of results. Clearly, the one established fact in the debate over teacher pay is that most people have a strong opinion one way or the other. The likely true answer is that some good (especially young) teachers are vastly underpaid and many poor teachers are greatly overpaid. In terms of average pay for the profession, the best we can say is that we are probably getting it about right.

As children across the country are starting back to school or getting ready to do so, the debate over teacher pay is likely to be in the news again. There are two simple ways to think about teacher pay. The first is by comparing what teachers earn to other professions. The second is by looking at the market equilibrium for teachers. Below, I do both.

First, the facts about what teachers actually get paid. Teachers make much more than most people think. If one uses a less detailed data source, like the Census Bureau’s Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics data set, you would think teachers are severely underpaid. With that data, the best category you can get is for elementary and secondary schools. You would find such employees making and average of $2,913 per month during the school year, suggesting pay of perhaps under $30,000 on average, given that teachers do not get paid year-round in most cases. However, that category is all workers at elementary and secondary schools, not just teachers.