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Canceling student debt and establishing a higher base pay for teachers could help solve shortages, Sanders said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In his new role as head of the committee overseeing education policy in the Senate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) says a top priority will be fixing what he says are \u201cpathetically low\u201d starting salaries for teachers across the U.S., potentially starting with legislation to set a nationwide base salary to ensure that educators are paid properly.<\/p>\n
Sanders told Education Week<\/em><\/a> this week that addressing the teacher shortages<\/a> that have spread across the country during the pandemic will be a \u201cbig issue\u201d for him as chair of the powerful Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee \u2014 and that a substantial factor in addressing the shortages will be raising teacher salaries.<\/p>\n \u201c[W]hat is really very upsetting to me is that salaries for incoming teachers are just pathetically low,\u201d Sanders said. \u201cYou have many places in this country where you graduate college, you have student debt, and you begin your teaching profession at $16 an hour. That\u2019s just not acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n Teacher salaries have historically been low compared to salaries of other workers with college degrees, and the disparity has grown larger in recent years. <\/p>\n