Teachers' Cost of Living Matters More

I was reading the article “Teachers Cost of Living Matters More” and was intrigued and interested in the self-explanatory title. Apparently, before reading this article, I used to be persuaded to be an educator in the areas where the dollar signs were very high without realizing how the cost of living could affect my salary. This cost of living versus salary can have a major effect on recruiting and retention of teachers, especially when it comes to teachers deciding whether the job will adequately provide for their family or not.  Looking at the charts made me realize that four situations could occur concerning salary versus cost of living: high salary, high cost of living; high salary, low cost of living; low salary, high cost of living; and low salary, low cost of living. Any of these combinations could produce a potentially negative or positive result for teachers, especially for the ones who did not do all of their “homework” prior to making a decision about accepting a job in a particular area. The information in this particular article has directly affected my school when it comes to deciding the salaries of educators based upon a set budget managed by the school board.  These salaries are important in encouraging teachers to stay and teach to the best of their abilities, while also maintaining the ability to replace good teachers, when they leave for whatever reason, with ones of the same caliber or better.  Unfortunately, I will not be able to provide information on how this information would impact my teaching and students since I will be in the administrative field and do not currently teach.  

Reference:

Georgiou, Danielle, Villarreal, Pamela, & Moore, Matt. (2005, October 24). “ Teachers Cost of Living Matters More” .  Retrieved November 09, 2011, from https://elearn.mtsu.edu/d2l/lms/content/viewer/main_frame.d2l?ou=2975445&tId=19133317