# Pay Teachers More **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 13, 2011, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532 "2011-03-13T13:46:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/21 "2011-03-13T18:08:26Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > now the vast majority of teachers come from the bottom third of the college class - that is, the lowest 1/3 of SAT scores. Careful what you do with those stats: it’s not the vast majority, it’s 47%. Disproportionate, in other words, and definitely not what we want, but not quite as dire as you make it out to be. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/22 "2011-03-13T18:16:21Z")
Top 1/3rd of SAT scores is more a reflection of getting the top third of high school graduates though, no? ---
**Author:** ![WhyNot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c77e96/32.png) [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/23 "2011-03-13T18:22:52Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Careful what you do with those stats: it’s not the vast majority, it’s 47%. Disproportionate, in other words, and definitely not what we want, but not quite as dire as you make it out to be. Indeed. Sorry, I read it last night and didn’t recheck the numbers before posting that. My bad. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/24 "2011-03-13T18:24:31Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Another aspect of this should be addressed as well. When people mention that teachers only work about half the time that other salaried people do, several teachers (or others) will jump in and say that’s not true, teachers spend their own after school hours grading, preparing class work, attending school functions, giving students extra help, etc.. All fine, but I am always surprised that many teachers do not realize that the extra time they put in on top of a 1200 hour a year job does not bring them close to the typical salaried employee. Very few people getting paid at the same rate as teachers work a 40 hour week. Although its common for them to work only 48 weeks out of the year, 50 or more hours per week is very common. I think it is a reflection of the numerous teachers who have no work experience outside of teaching. Among other things, one way to properly compensate teachers is to make the job conform more to other professions in terms of time and productivity factors. This is a [PDF](http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/pol/tsa.pdf)of teacher shortages by state, subject matter, and year going back the last ten years. It organized somewhat confusingly, but the pattern is clear: there are persistent teacher shortages in most states in many, many subjects. And yes, there are schools and districts where getting hired is competitive, but these shortages form a nationwide pattern. In economics, a shortage of anything suggests that the market price is too low: people aren’t willing to provide at the price that people want to buy. If teaching is such a great deal relative to these other professions, why the shortages? Why are schools staffing crucial classes with permanent substitutes who have no qualifications beyond a pulse and a clean criminal record? In the end, any argument about relative difficulty between jobs or whether or not teachers “should” be happy at the wages they are receiving is pretty pointless–all jobs are hard, everyone wishes they were paid more. The persistent teacher shortage says more than that: it’s not teachers complaining, it’s potential teachers saying “no way that’s worth it”. So if we want better teachers, we have to find a way to make it worth it, by either raising the pay or improving the working conditions. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/25 "2011-03-13T18:34:55Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > I think this gets cause and effect mixed up, though. When you’re dealing with a kid in poverty, they’re likely to need free/reduced lunch, busing, and quite possibly the assistance of a social worker and one-on-one remediators or tutors. I’ve heard a stat saying it costs between 20-50% more to educate a kid in poverty than it does to educate a kid from a middle-class background, due to the extra services needed. So it seems likely that the most impoverished schools are both worst-performing and most expensive, not that more money leads to worse results. IN theory, that might be true. In practice, we have huge reams of data which demonstrate pretty finally and completely that increasing money to all kinds of programs has almost no impact on actual learning. There are pretty much two thigns which do: culture, and quality teachers. And the quality (sadly) has almost nothing to do with degrees, pay or benefits - it’s pretty much set by the individual. This is sad, because it means that there’s really nothing we can do to improve it. Thus, getting rid of many educational requirements and weakening unions and job security. This will tend to raise salaries over time. Ultimately, free lunches and busing aren’t terribly important - even middle-class kids get bussed. And few families in America are actually so poor as to really need free food (though I might be for it, especially if school lunches weren’t nasty). ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/26 "2011-03-13T18:36:31Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Just on my required hours at school, I put in 1600 hours a year (~200 days, counting workdays and pre- and post-year work, with a 7:30-3:30 schedule mandated). Yeah, that’s 20% less than the average working year, certainly–but my work week is usually about 48 hours a week, which brings it very close to the national average (1920 hours vs. 2000 hours, or 96% of a full-time-with-2-weeks-paid). > > And if you think that teacher complaints reflect an unfamiliarity with the corporate workweek, I gotta laugh. I worked in the corporate world, the world of universities, and the world of nonprofits before becoming a public school teacher. The only job whose intensity came close to comparing to teaching was working front-line food-service–and with that job, I could leave the job at the worksite. With teaching, I’m writing lesson plans in the shower, debating how to handle discipline issues while I fall asleep, discussing problems after work at parties. > > Rather than thinking that “it is a reflection of the numerous teachers who have no work experience outside of teaching,” it seems much likelier that the caviling about teachers’ easy jobs is a reflection of the numerous non-teachers who have no experience working inside of teaching. There is that too. I was discussing one factor, and a limited number of teachers I can confidently state demonstrate my point. I didn’t intend to paint all teachers with the same brush there, just to point that out. But if you had salaried positions requiring a college degree in private industry that had easier work weeks than teaching, why on earth did you leave such a cushy job? (I ask sarcastically, I sense your motivation to teach). > [@MandaJo](#): > > This is a [PDF](http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ope/pol/tsa.pdf)of teacher shortages by state, subject matter, and year going back the last ten years. It organized somewhat confusingly, but the pattern is clear: there are persistent teacher shortages in most states in many, many subjects. And yes, there are schools and districts where getting hired is competitive, but these shortages form a nationwide pattern. > > In economics, a shortage of anything suggests that the market price is too low: people aren’t willing to provide at the price that people want to buy. If teaching is such a great deal relative to these other professions, why the shortages? Why are schools staffing crucial classes with permanent substitutes who have no qualifications beyond a pulse and a clean criminal record? > > In the end, any argument about relative difficulty between jobs or whether or not teachers “should” be happy at the wages they are receiving is pretty pointless–all jobs are hard, everyone wishes they were paid more. The persistent teacher shortage says more than that: it’s not teachers complaining, it’s potential teachers saying “no way that’s worth it”. So if we want better teachers, we have to find a way to make it worth it, by either raising the pay or improving the working conditions. I’m not taking a contrary position to that. I have no doubt a teacher shortage could be relieved by higher salaries, and would not exist if the salaries were not too low. Did I imply that I was identifying a single cause to the problem? ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/27 "2011-03-13T18:39:50Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I’m not taking a contrary position to that. I have no doubt a teacher shortage could be relieved by higher salaries, and would not exist if the salaries were not too low. Did I imply that I was identifying a single cause to the problem? My impression was that you were stating that teachers didn’t know how easy they had it, what with all that time off, and that if anything they were overcompensated and simply whining about how hard their jobs were. If that was not your point, I apologize. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/28 "2011-03-13T18:42:08Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Interesting point–I hadn’t thought about that, although this is part of my theory of education, namely that many people go into it because it’s the most attractive career option for them. As Kristof says, this used to be true for really smart women: teaching was one of the only career options for women that was primarily intellectual. But now really smart women have much more attractive career options. The ones that go into teaching seem to fall into three categories: > -Married to guys with high-paying jobs, so they can afford to have a lower-paying job; > -Totally dedicated to the profession; or > -This really is the most attractive career option for them. > > The first group may or may not be good teachers. The second group generally is good. The third group is downright pitiful. > > The male teachers I know at the primary level generally don’t have a higher-earning spouse, so they fall in the latter two categories. This is insightful, as was John Mace’s post to which it was a response. But while I think we should do what we can to improve the caliber of our teachers. I don’t think increasing salaries to the point that it would make a difference is realistic. There are just too many teachers, and school taxes would go up dramatically. Also, I think for _any_ job there is a correlation between what that job pays and the number of people who can do it. Fact is, teaching does not take as unusual combination of skills as, say neurosurgery. And it’s quite difficult to asses what teachers have a proficiency of A+, A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D, F. I agree that we should concentrate on the As and the below Ds. Get rid of the latter and reward the former. But here’s the really bad news. Even if we could greatly improve the quality of teachers, it would have, I fear negligible effect. By far the most important determinant of educational performance is parental involvement. And this works against us in those very areas most desperate for improvement: our poorer areas and communities of color. But thanks for the article. Interesting. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/29 "2011-03-13T18:53:17Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > Top 1/3rd of SAT scores is more a reflection of getting the top third of high school graduates though, no? No. SATs are optional, cost money to take, and are taken by people intending to go to college ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/30 "2011-03-13T18:59:47Z")
> [@sh1bu1](#): > > No. SATs are optional, cost money to take, and are taken by people intending to go to college What I’m saying is, SATs are taken before anyone ever goes to college. Is it the case that the top 1/3rd of SAT takers end up being the top 1/3rd of college graduates? You said this earlier: > [@](#): > > I can’t imagine how we can succeed without having teachers from the top 1/3 of college grads. Hell, even the top 50% would be an improvement. So then using SAT as the measure for that…just doesn’t make sense. While it would never come up in the real world, imagine you sit down at a job interview immediately after graduating college. Let’s say you graduated with a 2.5 GPA but were in the top 10 % of SAT scores four years ago when you were admitted to the school. The employer says, “so how did you do in college?” Do you think anyone would consider it the honest/correct answer if this hypothetical interviewee with a 2.5 college GPA said “I was in the top third of college graduates at my school”? No, because when people talk about “top x of **college graduates** ” they may be talking about a wide range of things (major GPA, overall GPA, GPA adjusted for difficulty of major, et al) but I’ve never seen a scenario in which someone asking that question is asking about what that person’s SAT scores were back when they were in High School. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/31 "2011-03-13T19:08:57Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > My impression was that you were stating that teachers didn’t know how easy they had it, what with all that time off, and that if anything they were overcompensated and simply whining about how hard their jobs were. If that was not your point, I apologize. I was speaking of some teachers who seem to raise the point a lot, and I think it’s irrelevant on top of being untrue in some cases. The good teachers don’t get paid enough, the bad ones too much, and in some areas, as you pointed out, they are all underpaid. I know of one rare case where almost all teachers were paid too much because of unjustified yearly increases over a long period of time, resulting in newer teachers not getting paid enough. So there are a number of reasons why the pay scale is off. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/32 "2011-03-13T19:21:04Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > I was speaking of some teachers who seem to raise the point a lot, and I think it’s irrelevant on top of being untrue in some cases. The good teachers don’t get paid enough, the bad ones too much, and in some areas, as you pointed out, they are all underpaid. I know of one rare case where almost all teachers were paid too much because of unjustified yearly increases over a long period of time, resulting in newer teachers not getting paid enough. So there are a number of reasons why the pay scale is off. I think teachers keep bringing it up preemptively because we are often told that we have it tremendously easy, and it’s a teacher trait to feel _really really guilty_ about having anything easy. So we are quick to defensively explain that we don’t. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/33 "2011-03-13T19:38:35Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > I think teachers keep bringing it up preemptively because we are often told that we have it tremendously easy, and it’s a teacher trait to feel _really really guilty_ about having anything easy. So we are quick to defensively explain that we don’t. Ok, I don’t say that teachers have it easy, and others shouldn’t either. I can understand being touchy about the subject, I might be a little touchy about some things on occasion. I don’t understand the guilt part though. The only teachers who would reasonably feel guilty about their pay should be the ones who know that they are overpaid. I’ll also try to avoid painting all teachers with the same brush. I don’t intend to, but it may sound that way, especially to a teacher who has been painted in that manner before. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/34 "2011-03-13T19:45:39Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > I think teachers keep bringing it up preemptively because we are often told that we have it tremendously easy, and it’s a teacher trait to feel _really really guilty_ about having anything easy. So we are quick to defensively explain that we don’t. As a taxpayer having it easy or not isn’t really part of my concern. A lot of people other than teachers don’t have it easy, as well. When I look at a public employees salary, as a taxpayer, I want to know before we talk about raises whether or not those raises are required to a) improve what we get in return as taxpayers or b) maintain what we currently have. Obviously we have to do COLA from time to time with public employees, and those are raises that you can argue “maintain what we currently have.” If we want to do even bigger raises, I dunno, as a taxpayer I’d really like some convincing that they are going to really improve things. If not, then I’d say as long as teachers in my state are making roughly market rate (meaning generally close to their peers in other states) then I’m not really too concerned. I do know if we want to start paying teachers like lawyers then I don’t want them to have a defined benefits pension plan, if you raise the entire pay scale by 50% I can just see some serious problems with keeping those plans solvent (many states have such problems now, in any case.) In many states, you have three defined benefit pension systems. One is for police, this one is usually the best plan, with the most generous pensions (relative to salary earned), shortest term of service required to begin collecting said pension, and generally the lowest required contribution from active employees (many police officers do not have to pay into their pension plans out of their salary directly at all.) Then you have the teachers pension plan, which usually requires more years of service to cash out, generally is a bit less generous, and may sometimes require an employee contribution (although just like with police pensions, many teachers do not have to pay towards their pensions at all.) Finally you have the pension plan for “all other state/public employees.” In many states employees have 4-8% taken directly off the top of their annual pay and put into the plan, with matching rates from 12-17% put into the plan by the employing agency. In states that have the “three plan” system, these plans typically are the least generous, require the most time in service to cash out, and et cetera. If teachers are going to be getting paid as well as a lawyer or a CPA, then at the very least they need to be moved into “third” type pensions, where their salaries pay for some of the cost. Realistically I’d say we shouldn’t have defined benefit plans if teachers pay rates go up 50%, they should instead be given a modest employee match on contributions to a 457 plan or equivalent. As a total aside, I think the pay rates we give police officers and their benefit package is far too generous. When I was in the military I made very bad pay and I was over large numbers of men and vast millions of government property and resources. The trade off was, I got to retire after 20 years (if I wanted), with a generous pension. I also had lots of perks while I was in service, such as a housing allowance, great health care, cheap access to food and et cetera. That was the trade off. With police officers it’s like the deal is “retire making 80% of $110,000 after 25 years, and you’ll often take home 40% more than base pay in over time right from the beginning of your 25 years on duty.” Police aren’t making any real trade offs, and no free market would pay them so much. ---
**Author:** ![fumster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9c0ed/32.png) [@fumster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fumster)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/35 "2011-03-13T19:50:33Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > While it would never come up in the real world, imagine you sit down at a job interview immediately after graduating college. Let’s say you graduated with a 2.5 GPA but were in the top 10 % of SAT scores four years ago when you were admitted to the school. The employer says, “so how did you do in college?” Do you think anyone would consider it the honest/correct answer if this hypothetical interviewee with a 2.5 college GPA said “I was in the top third of college graduates at my school”? No, because when people talk about “top x of **college graduates** ” they may be talking about a wide range of things (major GPA, overall GPA, GPA adjusted for difficulty of major, et al) but I’ve never seen a scenario in which someone asking that question is asking about what that person’s SAT scores were back when they were in High School. Got you, and you are right. Not sure how to judge top graduates across multiple disciplines. My “feeling” is that we are not paying enough to attract the kinds of teachers we want. I’d like to see the whole education system blown up and redesigned from scratch. Starting with how we fund it. It’s insane to base it on the tax base of each locale. Then we can look at making it more like other professions. Lower paid, lower skilled staff should be taking attendance, supervising recess, entering grades, answering routine phone callas and emails, etc. Then let’s make the school year longer and the day longer while we are at it. Make better use of media; for example, have physics lessons done by a great teacher (like today’s Feynman) by telecast (or recording) and then let teachers supervise the labs and answer questions individually. Then get rid of the grade system and group kids by ability in each subject rather than (or in addition to) age. Lecture hall type lessons would work if you have similar kids. You can’t do that now because top students are bored and slower students aren’t ready. Make education exciting by using math to solve cool problems that kids can relate to, bring history alive by using books that are written by a person rather than a committee. I learned so much more about the Civil War by reading popular non-fiction books than in class. Let’s make top students as well known in the communities as athletes, put student art on display in public spaces, and do other things that show that we value achievement in other areas as important as sports. I am so frustrated by the current situation that I could spit. ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_Stimulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Digital\_Stimulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_Stimulus)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/36 "2011-03-13T19:54:34Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I do know if we want to start paying teachers like lawyers then I don’t want them to have a defined benefits pension plan… Not to speak for teachers, as I’m not one, but I suspect you’d find _very_ few teachers would have a problem with that. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/37 "2011-03-13T20:01:29Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > As a taxpayer having it easy or not isn’t really part of my concern. A lot of people other than teachers don’t have it easy, as well. That’s totally fine. Understand, though, that teachers hear from a lot of conservatives about how easy we have it, as though the summer vacation mandated by the state signals a personal failing on our part. (I for one would be happy to work an extra 8 weeks a year if it meant a 15% pay bump. Indeed I try to make that happen every year by scrounging for extra things I can do for the district or via other opportunities). If your stance is just not caring about us personally–if you approach it as a simple market decision–I’m fine with that. It does seem to me that the current system draws disproportionately from the lower-achieving end of the student spectrum for public school teachers (I remember reading once, no cite offhand, about a tendency among high school counselors to steer bright students away from, and dull students toward, the teaching profession; and I, a kickass student academically speaking, had two different professors **in the education department** try to steer me away from teaching because they thought it was a waste of my talents). I do think that a system that recruits from the top high school students instead of from the bottom high school students would do wonders to improve education in our country. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/38 "2011-03-13T20:12:53Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > That’s totally fine. Understand, though, that teachers hear from a lot of conservatives about how easy we have it, as though the summer vacation mandated by the state signals a personal failing on our part. (I for one would be happy to work an extra 8 weeks a year if it meant a 15% pay bump. Indeed I try to make that happen every year by scrounging for extra things I can do for the district or via other opportunities). If your stance is just not caring about us personally–if you approach it as a simple market decision–I’m fine with that. Yeah, I’m not concerned too much one way or the other over the two months teachers get off. I don’t even know that I really like the idea of year round schooling, I know some studies have suggested it creates better student performance but I think it’s good for young children to have time out of the year to just _be kids_. Of course, I guess in this day and age the summer months are probably spent 24/7 watching TV and playing video games, which I have less interest in seeing on a societal level. Commercial fishermen work fewer months out of the year than teachers, and they actually make fairly good pay. I don’t see many people saying they have it easy, so no, how many months you work out of the year isn’t automatically indicative of how hard you work. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/39 "2011-03-13T20:26:13Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > I do know if we want to start paying teachers like lawyers then I don’t want them to have a defined benefits pension plan, if you raise the entire pay scale by 50% I can just see some serious problems with keeping those plans solvent (many states have such problems now, in any case.) In many states, you have three defined benefit pension systems. One is for police, this one is usually the best plan, with the most generous pensions (relative to salary earned), shortest term of service required to begin collecting said pension, and generally the lowest required contribution from active employees (many police officers do not have to pay into their pension plans out of their salary directly at all.) Then you have the teachers pension plan, which usually requires more years of service to cash out, generally is a bit less generous, and may sometimes require an employee contribution (although just like with police pensions, many teachers do not have to pay towards their pensions at all.) Don’t forget, it many cases teachers do not pay into and are not covered by Social Security. That is the case for my wife, for example. The definied pension plan is a replacement for SS, not in addition to it, and they pay part of their salary towards it. It’s shocking how many people are unaware of that. ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2011, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532/40 "2011-03-13T20:26:33Z")
> [@Martin\_Hyde](#): > > As a taxpayer having it easy or not isn’t really part of my concern. A lot of people other than teachers don’t have it easy, as well. > > When I look at a public employees salary, as a taxpayer, I want to know before we talk about raises whether or not those raises are required to a) improve what we get in return as taxpayers or b) maintain what we currently have. Obviously we have to do COLA from time to time with public employees, and those are raises that you can argue “maintain what we currently have.” If we want to do even bigger raises, I dunno, as a taxpayer I’d really like some convincing that they are going to really improve things. All I can tell you is that right now, in my urban district and in many other areas with teacher shortages (and these are the areas with the lowest scores) the question is not “who should we hire?” but instead “Can we find anybody?” Many times, we will maybe interview 2 people for a position, and take the one that is the least objectionable. It seems to me that improving that–either through raising salaries or improving working conditions–couldn’t help but make the situation better. > [@](#): > > If not, then I’d say as long as teachers in my state are making roughly market rate (meaning generally close to their peers in other states) then I’m not really too concerned. I think the more important metric is whether or not you are getting the quality of teachers you want. The problem isn’t losing teachers to other states, it’s losing them (or never getting them) from other industries. > [@](#): > > I do know if we want to start paying teachers like lawyers then I don’t want them to have a defined benefits pension plan, if you raise the entire pay scale by 50% I can just see some serious problems with keeping those plans solvent (many states have such problems now, in any case.) In many states, you have three defined benefit pension systems. One is for police, this one is usually the best plan, with the most generous pensions (relative to salary earned), shortest term of service required to begin collecting said pension, and generally the lowest required contribution from active employees (many police officers do not have to pay into their pension plans out of their salary directly at all.) Then you have the teachers pension plan, which usually requires more years of service to cash out, generally is a bit less generous, and may sometimes require an employee contribution (although just like with police pensions, many teachers do not have to pay towards their pensions at all.) > > Finally you have the pension plan for “all other state/public employees.” In many states employees have 4-8% taken directly off the top of their annual pay and put into the plan, with matching rates from 12-17% put into the plan by the employing agency. In states that have the “three plan” system, these plans typically are the least generous, require the most time in service to cash out, and et cetera. Here in Texas, teachers all pay 6% of their income directly into the Teacher Retirement System. I had no idea that wasn’t standard. What we don’t pay–and won’t get–is social security. I’d be fine with getting rid of a defined benefits plan, but we’d have to build the whole thing up from the ground, and certainly a bait-and-switch on people close to retirement would not be cool. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pay-teachers-more/574532.md?page=3)