The Department of Labor and Regulation annually reports on job placement outcomes for our postsecondary graduates. The 2015 report tells us how many graduates from Fiscal Years 2012 and 2013 were working in South Dakota in 2014 and how much they were making in their various fields.
Want to know why we’re short on teachers? Check out the data for graduates who trained to be teachers (I compile data only from entries with complete data):
| job field | grads | grads earning in SD | average annual wage |
| SPED total | 155 | 93 | $24,044 |
| ELED total | 390 | 256 | $22,866 |
| SecEd | 9 | 6 | $29,725 |
| K/PreEd | 13 | 11 | $26,445 |
| AgEd | 19 | 7 | $31,641 |
| EngEd | 13 | 8 | $27,066 |
| MathEd | 11 | 6 | $21,953 |
| MusicEdTotal | 25 | 13 | $16,148 |
| PETotal | 32 | 19 | $24,167 |
| History | 6 | 5 | $19,869 |
| Total | 673 | 424 | $23,342 |
We managed to keep 63% of these trained teachers here to serve our kids, but for this service we paid them bupkis. Their average pay was $23,342. Only the agriculture educators managed to break $30K in their year or two out; the music and history teachers didn’t break $20K.
In other fields, we only managed to retain 41% of wildlife science grads and 31% of animal science grads at similar low pay. We kept a mere 27% of engineering graduates, and we were offering them pay in the forties and low fifties.
For the big money, get those advanced degrees. A registered nurse newly PhD’d in 2013 earned $199,057. Next best were a PhD computational mathematician at $99,255, a Doctor of Nursing Practice at $97,189, and a new pharmacist at $95,728.
You have got to be kidding! Who can survive on $23,000/yr? Are you sure these number are correct, Cory? SD legislators and governor should be embarrassed and ashamed of this.
South Dakotans wonder how to keep their children in state. For starters they can start showing they care about their children’s education by paying teachers a competitive wage!
And people wonder why I left teaching ten years ago after doing if for five years. Nothing more satisfying then complementing whether or not you should apply for SNAP and heating assistance. If you pull this data forward up to five years you shouldn’t be surprised to see that even teachers with five years of experience rarely make more then beginning teachers unless they have switched districts and get the experience pay.
As a new Music Teacher, having graduated from NSU in 1985, my first contract at Roscoe, SD, was just over $13,500. Haven’t come very far since then, have we? Having to deal with $18,000/yr. at my last job (from 1991-1995) and dealing with 200 kids a week left me drained and spent. Note *I* was spent; I certainly didn’t have enough money to spend!
We have a teacher shortage, yet our esteemed (?) GDD wants to *cut* 400 teachers in order to pay the others more. What a crock of horse huckey. You don’t cut jobs in order to pay the rest. You *add* jobs in order to create more revenue so it’s spent in order to get the tax money to keep adding jobs. That’s progressive, and that’s something this Gov. doesn’t seem to understand.
Jenny, I do wonder about the completeness of those numbers. DOL reports them as I report them here.
SB 131 in the new teacher pay plan does include a provision requiring schools to report their instructional staff salaries to the Department of Education. Maybe the DOE will oblige us with a public, searchable database of all teacher salaries so we can check those numbers for ourselves.
guess which fields have the greatest shortages . . . ??
Ag educators earn more because they are typically on a twelve month contract.
This is the aggregate wage that are covered unemployment insurance. Basically its the annual wage calculated by dividing the total wages for graduates earning wages in South Dakota by the number of graduate wage earners.
Interesting enough this program that collects the data was sponsored by nearly a million dollar funding grant in 2012. The data here is pretty short term as there are no long term statistics. This also from my reading of this doesn’t include benefits but only net income.
horse huckey
What’s the problem here?…$23K is above minimum wage isn’t it…these folks may even qualify for Medicaid Expansion benefits and other public benefits.
This number…if correct is far below $48K…and embarrassing…and disgraceful for South Dakota. No wonder we have talented people moving out of SD…or working fast food. Our ‘leaders’ are mislabeled…and letting our children down. Remember this in the voting booth people….the vocal minority and silent majority have an equal say there.
If you are a music teacher, BOHICA indeed.
As one who last year lived on substantially less, I would say living on $23k is possible in SD, though based on my experiences, I assume it’s likely very stressful for teachers.
We can live on $23K a year. The question is whether professionals will choose to live on $23K a year when more lucrative opportunities are available.
If starting teachers really only make $23,000.00 a year that means for every starting teacher there is a teacher somewhere in this state making $55,000.00 plus according to our average teacher pay. No wonder nobody wants to start a teaching career. I would hope the increase in teacher pay goes to starting teachers at a wage closer to the average or we will not solve anything.
I have not seen politicians that are running for office really address crappy teacher pay so how can uninformed voters know what lever to pull. The more this is put into the light, the better it can be. Those numbers Cory put up should be put into actions like Medicaid and food stamps eligibility, ACA qualifiers to name a couple.
Cory, I agree, and in no way was disputing that question.
The averages are so low because part-time and partial contracts are being figured into the annual wage. Otherwise, we would need to reasonably assume that a beginning fulltime art teacher earns around $10,000 in South Dakota. If I had to estimate, I would say starting annual pay for fulltime, certified teachers in South Dakota in 2012-13 was somewhere around $30,000. For comparison purposes, I was hired by the Hoven School District in 2006 for $27,000 with no experience and on a regular contract. I currently make around $41,000 per year from my teaching contract.
Ewe da ram, Spence.