In a country where pro athletes’ make multi-million dollar contracts, movie stars make millions per movies and reality stars get paid just as much to endorse a product, educators across the country are still underpaid and underappreciated.

The average student usually spends about 12 years in school in order to receive a high school diploma. Then, when he or she gets to college, a beginning teacher has to major in education and get a state teaching certificate for elementary, secondary, or special education students. That takes another four to five years.

Many states also require a teacher to have a Master’s degree in the specific area of his or her teaching level. That takes another two to three years.

 When a teacher begins in a teaching job, he or she is required to keep the teaching certificate up to date with two graduate courses in the teaching area for every three to five years. Estimating that a teaching career is about thirty years and a college student takes four to five courses per year, teacher spend half of a year updating the teaching credential. The total minimum time for a teacher who already had graduated from high school and goes to college, earns an BA, an MA degree and keeps the teaching credentials up to date is six and one half years.

The starting salary for a high school teacher in the state of Illinois is $37,500 per year. Yet anyone can walk off the street into a fast food joint and get a job with no education and still rake in an average of $25,000 per year.
Then on the more obnoxious side, reality star Kim Kardashian makes $40,000 per episode on her E! reality TV show. She makes around $12 million dollars a year, and has a net worth of $35 million. She demands upwards of $100,000 just to show up somewhere.

Alex Rodriguez, of the New York Yankees, is earning the highest salary in MLB in 2011 at $32 million. He also has the highest career earnings in MLB history. His salary is $6 million higher than the second highest paid player.

And yet our teachers across the country, who educate all of the people who achieve these ridiculous salaries, are paid mediocre amounts for all the hard work they do. Some critics claim they make too much due to the fact that they have several months off, but many of them spend that time preparing for the next year of school. Either way, they contribute more to society than reality and sports stars.