Picture with me, for a moment, a woman named Maria. Maria has spent five years as a paraprofessional in a Title I elementary school on the South Side of Chicago. She knows every family in her school—which parents work night shifts, which kids need breakfast, which students light up during science experiments. When her principal suggested she become a certified teacher, Maria’s heart soared. She was born to do this work.
Then she looked at what it would take. A bachelor’s degree program would cost her roughly $19,250 per year in tuition at a public university. But that was just the beginning. To earn her teaching license, she’d need to complete months of full-time student teaching—unpaid. During that time, she’d still need to cover rent, groceries, and childcare for her own two kids, to say nothing of any “extras” like after-school opportunities or a family vacation. What Maria didn’t know but intuited in stressful, late nights doing back-of-the-envelope accounting is that the average education major graduates owing $29,250 in debt, then faces monthly loan payments of $342—well above the typical borrower—on a starting salary that pays 24% less than other college graduates.
Maria couldn’t make the math work. She’s still a paraprofessional. Who loses in this system? Maria and her own two kids, undoubtedly. But not just them. Alex Bell of Georgia State University and co-authors found that closing America’s class, gender, and race gaps in invention would quadruple the number of innovators, skyrocketing the pace and number of discoveries. For every Maria whose dream to teach is squelched, hundreds if not thousands of kids never have the teachers who can inspire them to achieve their potential and support them to close the gaps between their reality and their own wildest dreams.
Her story isn’t unique. It’s the story of a system that rations who gets to teach in America—not based on talent, commitment, or potential impact on students, but on who can afford to work full-time for free.
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