Majority of Americans favor pay increase for teachers: poll

WASHINGTON, April 23 (Xinhua) -- More than half of U.S. adults say they back pay raises for teachers nationwide, according to a poll released Monday.

Among the interviewed, 78 percent say that teachers don't make enough money in the United States, while 52 percent support teachers' walkouts for higher pay and 50 percent say they'd pay a higher tax bill if it meant more money for teachers, the poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed.

Just 15 percent think teachers are paid the right amount, while 6 percent think they're paid too much, the poll found.

The survey results came after multiple teacher strikes and other protests over low pay, tough classroom conditions and the amount of money allocated to public schools in several Republican-led states.

The recent run of teacher protests began in March in West Virginia, where teachers won a raise after going on strike.

The strategy soon spread to the states of Oklahoma, Kentucky, Colorado and Arizona, where educators joined together online and have held increasingly frequent protests during the past six weeks, said a PBS news report.

In 2016-2017, the average salary for a U.S. public school teacher was 58,950 dollars, down slightly from the previous year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The AP-NORC poll interviewed 1,140 adults between April 11 and 16 with the margin of sampling error at 4.0 percentage points. Enditem