That may be true. My question is, what is the pay after normalizing to a typical private sector arrangement, ie. 40 hour week + time and a half overtime, 50 week year, in order to get an apples to apples comparison. Because every time this topic comes up people segment into 2 camps - one that says teachers work 3 days a week for 8 and a half months and the unions who say they work 8 days a week for 62 weeks/year. Some quick napkin math, you can tell me how far off base I am with my assumptions: Your typical day is 6:30-4:00. Assume you're a typical teacher. In most jobs that's base 9 hours base pay (1/2 hour unpaid lunch), plus time and a half for the 1 hour overtime. 9.5 hours/day paid. You work a "couple" hours on the weekend. I'm not sure how literal to read that. I'll assume that means 4 hours on the weekend. All overtime pay, so 6 hours paid for that. Now to figure out the school year. I don't know where you work, I won't ask. I grew up in the Osseo school district, I think its a typical enough district. Their calendar is here. School year runs Sept 3-June 5. During the summer there are 7 days staff training and 4 days for Open House before the start of school. So before accounting for holidays, the work year is 42 weeks + 1 day. Holidays in District 279 during the school year (not including staff training days, Labor Day, or Memorial Day): Christmas: 8 days Spring break 5 days MLK, Presidents Day, and other random holidays: 8 days. Assume that the typical teacher will work half-time during the holidays. Instead of 21 days, 10.5 days of holiday during the year. So the actual work year then is 40 weeks, 1.5 days, where each week is 53.5 paid hours paid (after overtime) and the 1.5 days equates to 14.25 hours paid (after overtime). Total paid hours then after including time and a half for overtime is 2154.25 hours / year. According to this, average 1st year k-12 teacher salary in MN was $33,009 for the 2010-2011 year. Average teacher salary in MN was $53,680 for the same year. Assume no COLA increases since that year. The apples to apples, hourly wage then, works out thusly: First year teachers: $15.32 / hour Average teacher: $24.92 / hour Is that a fair estimation?