[Ghostwriter]

Originally Posted by agzg

Also, these numbers are the MEANS and MEDIANS, meaning, there are people above and below these numbers because they don't account for experience, number of years teaching, educational background, etc. There sure are teachers making $60,000 a year - but they've been in that district for a while. While we're at it, the 10% and 25% marks run from $32,962 to $43,292, which is quite a bit less than $60,000. 90% tops out at $72,865, which is $12,000 more than $60,000.

ETA because I was curious: According to Salary.com the area with the most parity to Milwaukee in terms of cost of living in NC is the Charlotte area, which is 4.4% lower than Milwaukee. The median salary for an elementary school teacher in that area is $50,974, and for high school is $53,151.

If an elementary teacher making the median from Milwaukee (making $52,401 per year) were to move to Charlotte, NC, to make the median there ($50,974), according to the cost of living calculator on salary.com they would have a $22/year negative net change in disposable income.

I am sitting here doing my taxes for my daughter who is in her 4th year teaching High School and she made ~34K salary. So I know what I am talking about. Her salary has been frozen for all 4 years due to the NC budget crunch (with Dems in charge). She lives in the Charlotte area of which you compared means (usual average) and median (mid point of population). The little ~ means approximately. So if Milwaukee teachers in High School make 54K+ than I consider that the ~ neighborhood. The ~ 60K I gave as typical is probably within 3 standard deviations of the mean but I have not crunched the data. I will not use the term typical for semantics purposes again, but you get my point. They are certainly not poor as most would define poor.