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Geography: Teacher salaries are set locally, and there’s a wide variation between wealthy and poor districts. At the high end, a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s degree in Virginia’s suburban Fairfax County earns $44,440 for a 194-day contract (for most professionals, the work year is about 250 days). Salary rises a little if additional responsibilities are taken on, like coaching a team or supervising a club. Given the high cost of living in Fairfax, which is right outside Washington, these first-year teachers are not one-percenters jetting off to Martha’s Vineyard for vacation. But in many communities, if teachers stick with the profession for 20 years or more and marry another teacher who does the same, they’ll find their way into the top fifth of U.S. household incomes. Not too shabby.
Drive an hour south, however, to Virginia’s rural Madison County, and the starting salary for a teacher with a bachelor’s degree is $37,000 over the next 19 years, it will slowly rise to $44,000. That’s a tough sell, even when you account for Madison’s lower cost of living. And around the country there are more Madisons than Fairfaxes.
Subject matter: Unlike most fields, where there are differences in compensation for different kinds of skills, teachers are overwhelmingly paid through a lock-step system called “steps and lanes.” Steps are years of service and lanes are earned degrees. This sounds sensible except ample research shows that higher degrees are not a proxy for greater effectiveness in the classroom. And while most professions pay some premium for experience, the evidence is clear that after a few years of teaching, the relationship between experience and effectiveness isn’t strong enough to be the overwhelming determinant of pay it is now.

A. 어휘
Geography 지리. variation 변이, 편차, 변동. districts 지역, 학구.
bachelor’s degree 학사 학위. County 郡(군). additional 부가적.
take on 떠맡다. supervise 관리하다, 지휘하다, 감독하다.
one-percenters 소득 순위 1% 이내에 드는 사람.
jetting off 비행기 타고 떠나가다.
Martha’s Vineyard 고급 여름 휴양지(미국 동부).
stick with 勤續(근속)하다. household incomes 가계 수입.
shabby 초라한. rural 시골의. starting salary 初俸(초봉).
Subject matter 주제. overwhelmingly 압도적으로.
lock-step 밀집행진. sensible 양식이 있는. ample 큰, 넓은, 충분한.
proxy 대리인, 위임장. determinant 결정 요소.