In public schools, most teachers are paid on a step and lane salary schedule. Teachers’ steps are based on years of teaching, sometimes going up each year, sometimes after several years, while “lanes” are based on their levels of education.
If you begin teaching fresh out of undergraduate school, the average age to reach the highest step is 55. The speed of changing lanes depends entirely on how quickly you earn additional education, including a master’s degree in education and professional development hours.
Additionally, becoming an expert in your field almost always places you in a higher income bracket right off the bat, making a teacher salary with a master’s degree an immediate pay raise over peers without the advanced degree.
According to the 2019-2020 Denver Public Schools salary schedule, for example, a first-year teacher with a bachelor’s made $45,800, while a first-year teacher with a master’s in education made $50,343. A fifth-year teacher with a bachelor’s earned $51,563, while a fifth-year with a master’s earned $57,044. While it is not universally true that a fifth-year teacher with a bachelor’s would earn an amount so similar to a first-year with a master’s, districts often pay pays teachers with master’s degrees at higher rates.
The National Education Association (NEA) also supports this claim. It reports that for the 2017-2018 school year, the nationwide average teacher pay for those with a bachelor’s degree ranged from $39,249 to $57,827, while those with master’s degrees earned $42,927 to $66,919. Assuming the median difference of $6,385 per year, that could add up to an additional $127,700 over 20 years of teaching.