Yes- In some states teachers are paid pretty well. Also, it really depends on where they are in their career. In most public jobs, the entry level pay is not that high compared to private sector professional jobs. That is often off-set by holiday pay, availability of overtime (or summer school, recess duty,coaching, and other things in the case of teachers), often a bit better insurance than many private sector jobs, and civil service rules that protect you from being fired even if you are a bit lazy. Most public sector jobs reward you for sticking around and the longer you are there, the more equal pay becomes unless you are talking executive level jobs. At the executive level, department heads almost never make what a comparable private sector executive with similar responsibilities makes but unless you are the Fire Chief, Police Chief or Superintendent of Schools- the very top guy or girl you still have civil service protection and unless you do something really bone headed the likelihood of losing your job is pretty slight. Unlike the private mid level manager you can be moved back in the ranks but not fired in the true sense of the “at will” definition.

Before anyone flames on me, I am not saying there is anything wrong with the above system. I worked in it my whole career. It mostly works well because most, in my experience, police, fire, EMS, educators, don’t go into those professions to get rich and are pretty motivated to do a good job based on some intrinsic qualities they have. It doesn’t work as well with the occasional bad egg, because it is a bit harder to move them along to something else.

At the end of my career, I was making a pretty decent salary, banked 20 hours of leave and 8 hours of sick leave a month and enjoyed a long career doing something I loved and was pretty good at, I think. I was also responsible for 300 employees in. 24/7 operation where if one of them made a bad decision, my boss could potentially lose his job the next day. Talking to my friends in the private sector, my salary would probably have been much higher sooner, and several of them tried to hire me away at times but I was never that interested.

I think most teachers I have met are pretty mission driven so there are certainly parallels with other public sector service type careers. The point is after a few years most can afford a new car.