California teachers the highest-paid in U.S.

The Orange County Register reports:

California public school teachers must be woefully underpaid, right? Not exactly. But let's not quibble. Let's use teacher union statistics.

According to the CTA's parent union, the National Education Association, California teachers were the nation's top-paid, with $64,424 average annual salary in 2007-08.

Don't take just the NEA's word for it. The other mammoth national public school teacher union, the American Federation of Teachers AFL-CIO, said the year before the CTA study that "for the second consecutive year, California had the highest average teacher salary in 2006-07 at $63,640, or about 25 percent above the national average."

But,being a teacher in Kansas or Texas is a much better deal because of the cost of living.