I’m not a teacher, but Oklahoma teacher salaries are the 48th lowest in the country, the average being about $42,000. Of course, teachers in bigger cities make more than that, but teachers in smaller towns make quite a bit less. There is an whole other issue, which is quality of teachers, which, of course, varies widely. My son teaches at a private school in another state, with much higher wages, in the public schools, though his salary is very low, compared to his state average, since private schools, one of which he is employed, are notoriously low paying. He would make well over twice as much, if he worked in a public school, but they couldn’t pay him enough to work in a public school, because of notoriously slack discipline and academics in them.
Yes, class sizes are much reduced nowadays, teacher’s unions have lowered the bar for teacher quality, and to a non-teacher, the 9 month schedule sounds like a dream, but seeing how many of the young people behave, nowadays, and the ridiculous and subversive curricula teachers are expected to teach, I’m not sure how they get anyone, except the most ardent of leftist of ideologues, to become teachers at all. Many are dedicated to children, and really want to teach. The pity is, that teachers are not paid according to their merit, so that excellent teachers are adequately rewarded, and bad teachers are allowed to be paid less, and fired.
The bad teachers make too much and the good teachers are underpaid for what they do and deal with. And of course the government has lied and wasted away money to benefit only themselves. We also fell for the lottery scam a few years ago to help the children.
The bottom line is that the system is broken from the top down to the local schools. The wrong people are benefitting, including bad teachers, bad administrators, and crooked politicians.