It was after 6 on a Tuesday evening when I got a text from one of my school administrators: I was required to chaperone a school dance that Friday until 9 p.m. along with other teachers on my team.
So much for date night, I thought, knowing that I would have to cancel my plans.
It’s not that I don’t actually enjoy school dances. But in most lines of work without six-figure salaries, being required to work beyond contract hours means receiving overtime pay. Nothing of the sort was provided here, not even a meal. And my school wasn’t required to compensate me.
Teachers are leaving the classroom due to workload and burnout, and we don’t have enough new teachers joining the profession to fill the gap. This teacher shortage is becoming a crisis. If we want to keep the teachers we have, let’s pay fairly for the extra work they put in.
Related: Become a lifelong learner. Subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to receive our comprehensive reporting directly in your inbox.
Since 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act has worked to protect workers by prohibiting many forms of child labor, setting a minimum wage and requiring time-and-a-half overtime pay for workweeks that exceed 40 hours. The protections apply to most U.S. hourly and some salaried workers that earn below certain thresholds.
However, the law exempts some classes of white-collar professionals, like executives and doctors. Many of these groups make well above the overtime pay threshold. But, for nearly a century, teachers have been part of that exemption, too. And in January, when the Biden administration’s new rules raise the salary threshold for overtime pay to $58,656, the almost 1.5 million teachers who make less than that still won’t receive overtime pay.
The teacher exemption is based on a federal rule that is woefully out of date. It’s time for it to end.
Teachers are treated like a professional class in some settings and a labor class in others. Typically, we get the worst of both worlds. Many of our colleagues, like custodians and nurses, will become eligible for overtime pay next year, and I’m happy for them.
But teacher pay growth continues to trail inflation, even as we regularly work beyond contract hours — averaging 53 hours per week.
This unpaid overtime includes more than dances, clubs and athletic events; we take work home nightly simply to do our jobs well. By contract, I’m paid for seven hours of work each day — but that time only accounts for instruction.
Teaching well takes more time than that. I typically get to work an hour early to set up labs, print student handouts and sharpen pencils. I stay for at least 30 minutes after school, sending feedback home to students’ parents.
When I get home, I typically spend another two hours at my desk after dinner, grading student work, responding to emails and documenting data about students who have specific learning or behavioral needs.
It comes to 11 hours of work most days. Add to that the lesson planning most of us do on weekends, and it’s no wonder teachers are so stressed and why so many are leaving the profession.
This is why more teachers are calling for the overtime exemption to end. The feedback, the planning, the communication with families — it’s something every good teacher does because we wouldn’t be effective if we didn’t. If extra time is mandatory to get the job done well, we should be compensated for it.
Related: One state radically boosted new teacher pay — and upset a lot of teachers
A study by the Economic Policy Institute found that, if the Fair Labor Standards Act protection were extended to teachers, almost a quarter of us make so little that we would be eligible for the overtime pay.
This would especially benefit women and teachers of color, as well as early career teachers, whose salaries often fall well below the average. And those pay gaps are exacerbated in nonunionized schools.
Ending the teacher exemption isn’t just about fairness. It also just makes economic sense.
It is less expensive to pay people for their time than to lose and replace teachers from an ever-shrinking pipeline, and teachers who feel well-compensated are more effective than those who are burnt out and stretched thin.
Most teachers, like me, want to spend joyful time with our students — at school dances for example. But we also have our own lives to balance.
Compensating teachers fairly for our time will make us more effective and less prone to burnout, and lead to less costly staff churn. With the election behind us and inauguration on the horizon, the lame duck period is the best time to flip this federal rule. Let’s change it this year.
Ronak Shah has been a middle school science teacher in Indianapolis for 13 years, and a Teach Plus Senior Writing Fellow. His instruction has been featured in the Washington Post and in the documentary “Food First.”
Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].
This story about teacher pay was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.