A higher salary would be great, of course, but in lieu of that, I’d like:
Smaller class sizes, ie., hire more teachers, especially for special needs students
Better facilities: a school that isn’t falling apart, with good ventilation, carpets that aren’t 50 years old and allergy-inducing, walls that aren’t paper thin, windows with screens so bees don’t fly in and sting my students, etc.
Improved technology: computers in every class, for instance
Equipment that works, like copiers
Dental insurance and eyeglass coverage
If these were funded instead of giving me a higher salary, I’d be happy.
Yeah…I’d RATHER have folks fighting to be teachers because the pay or benefits are good and they would consider being a teacher RATHER than poor pay compensated by the fact that some teachers do it for the benefit of society.
Then there is this can o worms.
Really educated and good history teacher.
Really educated and good physical sciences teacher.
Pay em the same?
Which one would/could most likely make much more money in the “real” world rather than teaching?
I think a lot of the argument comes from the disconnect between people that deal with different school districts. In my high school the average salary was probably $80,000/yr with first year teachers with a bachelors making ~$45,000/yr. Apparently there are some districts that don’t pay that much until a decade or more of teaching.
There are two things that both me about the teacher salary argument. One is the claim that teachers don’t get paid much. Some teachers don’t get paid much. I’ve got no sympathy for any teacher in my hometown. Apparently central Texas is different and that blows. The second, and I’m not sure this is universal, is that pay raises are completely independent of merit.
Those talking of ‘merit-related pay’ and similar - how do you suggest the performance of individual teachers should be measured? It’s not as easy as you might think.
I have never met a teacher who made that much, ever. The librarian who retired after 35 years made about $80,000. I think that’s about as much as the principal’s starting salary. This is GD, so I will second the call for cites that “many many” teachers make six figures.
ETA: You offered a cite, but I don’t think you proved the claim of “many many.” I wonder how many of those 6 figure salaries were administrators.
I’ll go back and check on the administration. I left out the two I knew, there are some new faces though. Give me a minute.
I just checked Alton and New Trier for a lower end and higher end of the Illinois spectrum. Altron had about 1% of their teachers making more than 100k, I’m assuming that includes administration. New Trier had 37% making over $100k, again probably including administration.
I’m working in the wrong damn district then, though it’s worth any amount of money to me not to have to live in Texas, no offense. Here’s a cite for where I live of the average English teacher’s salary at $39,000. For a job that requires a Masters, that’s not a whole lot of scratch, you have to admit. That said, there are things I’d rather have than a higher salary, mostly b/c I know the higher salary is not forthcoming, and I’d like the kids to benefit too.
ETA: Do you live in TX? If not, where the hell did I get that from?
Why? The flexibility of the job is a major incentive to take it, and it doesn’t cost much to offer.
Look, there is no such thing as “paid too much” or “not paid enough”. There’s no point in talking about how much teachers work or don’t work compared to other jobs, nor trying to value the other perks of the job–it just leads to shrill attacks and shriller defenses and doesn’t really mean anything. I mean, I know I work harder than plenty of people that make more than me and I work less than plenty of people that make less than I do. Salaries/wages aren’t fair.
You have to look at supply and demand. At the compensation (salaries+perks) we are offering, are we getting the quality of teachers we want? In some districts/schools, we absolutely are–and in others we absolutely are not. If schools are turning away great teachers because people are clamoring for jobs there (and there are districts like that), they should start scaling back. If schools have permanent subs in half their classrooms because no one qualified to take the job is willing to, then they need to up the compensation–which may mean a higher salary, but which might also mean more time off, it might mean some sort of incentive/merit pay system, it might mean better benefits.
I don’t know why people always want to hang all this moral baggage on teaching compensation. It’s a job. Pay what it takes to get the quality you need.
Cites for 1 and 4 please? Explain how teachers are overpaid and where they would be working if not working as teachers. Also, which school districts are the best funded but worst performing?
Merit pay? Sure I am all for it, just tell me how to do it.
I have a bachelors from an Ivy League university in business, but I’m teaching English. I have to tell you, most teachers are not Ivy League graduates, because they’re not crazy like me. Most of them have gone to state universities, which is a fine education, but… if you want the type of people who go to Harvard and Yale to teach in public schools, you will have to pay more. If I left teaching and went into HR, I’d probably make quite a bit more than I’m making now, but I don’t want to because I like the job and the perqs outweight the negs. Most other teachers have undergrad and/or grad degrees in education, and couldn’t get other jobs anyway, so the question “What else would they be doing?” is a moot point.
One of my compatriots (since retired) used to playfully harass me about the fact that my degree is from a state college. One day I replied to one of his comments with
Me: Yes, I went to a state school. Where did you go?
Him: Georgetown.
Me: Where are we both teaching? Frankly, I’m not seeing an edge.
I have heard of “teachers” being paid 100,000, but they often were science teachers or math teachers (which in Jersey tended to be rather highly compensated, ymmv), and they were doing additional administrative work (curriculum development, for instance) on top of teaching duties.
If you want to channel more money to schools (which I’m all for), the place to start isn’t replacing teachers, it’s in increasing the number of teachers. In the Cleveland school district, where my mother worked, they had a mandatory class size limit, required by law, of 24 students. Neither I, in my nine years in the Cleveland public schools, nor my mom, in her 20-some years, ever saw a class that small, because law or no law, they simply didn’t have enough teachers to make that possible. Hire at least enough new teachers to meet the bare minimum standards required by law, first.
If you’ve still got money available after that, then hire teachers’ aides, who can work with smaller groups in a classroom, or escort a problem student to the office, or answer questions while the teacher is busy with another student, or cover the class for five minutes while the teacher needs to take a bathroom break. They don’t even need to be paid as much as the main teachers (they’d probably mostly be education students or semi-retired), and they could be part-time, but they’d make a huge difference in the classroom.
Seriously, there is no economic reason to go to an Ivy League college and then go into teaching. I thought I wanted to be a lawyer, and when I changed my mind, it took me several years of soul searching/aimless meandering to figure out I wanted to teach. I absolutely do not regret Cornell, which was the best experience of my life, hands down, but on the strict basis of money, it wasn’t worth it.
If you want Ivy League graduates to teach your kids, overall, you have to be willing to pay them more. Maybe that’s not important to people, I don’t know. I’d love my kids to be educated by Nobel laureates, but… not gonna happen until I’m willing to pay for an Ivy League college for them, I guess.
Well, yeah. That is how it works with every single other industry on Earth. When you limit your hiring pool to people who are willing to self-sacrifice, well you are going to cut out a lot of talented, qualified people.
I’ve been teaching overseas for three years, and when I’m done it will have been four years. I’ll have to make some decisions- do I keep teaching abroad? Do I got back to America and get the certifications I need to teach there? Or do I follow one of the many other paths available to someone who speaks a few languages and has quite a bit of international experience- business, NGO work, etc.?
I’m not sure, but damned right money is going to be a part of it. I’ll be 29 years old with four years of solid professional experience when I’m done here. I feel like I shouldn’t be scraping the couch cushions for rent money at that point.
i have no cite for my experience except for anecdotal personal experience.
I have found that in the k-12 ranks, “those who cannot do, teach” rings true especially for high school. there are exceptions but for the most part the teachers of the subjects would never be able to be hired in the private sector, and in most cases (in math and science. i have no idea about the liberal arts) tried their luck in the private sector, lost their footing, and landed in teaching. Some teachers are real sharp cookies who have a strong command of their subject and can lay out the lesson plan in ways that is easy to understand and convey the full bulk of the knowledge, but most are just going by guidelines and cookie cutter worksheets. It’s this standardization of learning material that i see as a failure of our education process. we’re not as disciplined as other nations to drill the lessons through rote memorization, and our teachers aren’t well versed enough in the subject to draw good enough analogies to convey the material.
i’ve listened to feynman’s lectures and he is a brilliant lecturer who just teaches VERY WELL. It’s just not the same when a grad student stands there for 3 hrs a week and stumbles his way through halfbaked notes. Now take that disparity and project it on HS physics, or biology, or chemistry. The subject matter isn’t difficult, we just lack the people who thoroughly understand the material to teach it, and teach it in a way that motivates learning. i guess, it’s the latter that makes teaching such a difficult profession.
ps, the shoddy pay doesn’t help attract the talent either.
What sorry state of education? Schools do exactly what they’re designed to do. Indoctrinate minors in the state doctrine so they become pegs to fit into the assigned holes. Funding Education is just another buzzword.
My mother was a public school teacher in GA for nearly thirty years. She had to take courses every summer, work at home every evening and weekend AND come out of pocket for some work related materials. That backwards-ass state even made it illegal for teachers to strike. The NEA and GEA were just as useless as most “unions”.
And parents suck. They all complain when lil’ Johnnie can’t read but they never address the little a-hole’s classroom behavior or ensure that coursework is completed. As long the little jerk isn’t at home for the day they’re content for the semester.
Look, I don’t know if teacher should make more or less than they do. But it seems silly to go into teaching and then complain about how much money they make. $50,000 is around the national average. If you want to make money, go be an investment banker or something.