In NY, Chicago, and other large cities, there is such a shortage of teachers in certain areas (Special Ed, bilingual, sometimes math/science) that the cities have had to come up with alternate certification programs. In NY, to get a 3-year temp certificate to teach in a bilingual classroom, you basically need to be bilingual and have a bachelor’s degree in any care, a pulse, and no criminal convictions. In order to keep the certification after 3 yers, you must have completed a master’s in education.
The starting salary for this alternative program, a few years back, was in the neighborhood of $30k. In NY, that’s sure not much money. I’m not sure whether the stating salary for teachers with regular certification is the same, but you can definitely make more as a secretary, and need less education and have less responsibility.
One has to look at the total package, and hours worked in a year. Of course, not just the 7:30-3:30, but a “reasonable” average of the hours put in during the school year. Then compare that to a white collar professional position that requires an equivalent education. Not sure what the gap would be, but one needs to make some reasonable assumptions instead of kneejerk ones to compare apples with apples.
As another teacher’s husband, I just want to second everything akwally1 said. The OP’s study does not cover nearly the extra time put in by most of the teachers that I know, nor does it cover expenses paid out of our pocket for classroom projects. I believe that on average, we spend several hundred dollars a year in addition to the small allotment that the school has for extra supplies.
My wife teaches in an ‘economically depressed’ area just north of Little Rock. She belongs to a union. Though people bitch about them (including us on occasion), I have to say that without that bargaining power, the teachers around here would be making a pittance. Everyone was upset when the Union’s negotiating team only managed a $1500 one-time raise with the state, while the governor had promised a $3000 raise state-wide (over a period of 3 years). But then, after the first year, it was announced that there would not be any funds for further raises, so the expectant non-union teachers had to be satisfied with the $1000.
As for the reluctance to give teachers raises, the fact is that my wife makes a comfortable living for AR (I am always surprised by how high we rank on the tax chart). You will have a hard time convincing most of her parents that she should be paid more when she makes more than virtually all of them.
I don’t know how it is in the States, but from talking to my Grade 11 and 12 (same teacher) english teacher he stated that he’s not allowed to get a second job during the summer. He did mention he needed to take “update” courses etc though.
I’m really not qualified to comment on teachers pay but from my HS experience (starting 11 years ago so I’m sure it all out of date) teachers didn’t teach one consecutive class all day but rather had what I would call “spares” throughout the day. Also, teachers did (or used to) mark in class while we did “quiet reading”. Isn’t this still how it still works?
Just to put things in perspective, a teacher in TO starts off at about $30K / year and a police officer makes $32K. I don’t know if I’d call that underpaid.
I sure would. I’d LOVE to be a teacher. My mother’s a teacher and I’d kill for her job, even though I make a few dollars more doing what I’m doing; teaching appeals to me on a personal level and the hours and vacation are WAY better than my office job. It’s far more compatible with a family life, too, since I wouldn’t have to do all the damned business travelling I do now. Sign me up, coach. Once I can figure out how to afford another year in school so I can get my teaching certificate, I’m going back. Screw the corporate world; I want to teach.
You can make the job sound horrible and underpaid with rhetorical questions all you like but hundreds of thousands of people choose to do it. And it wasn’t the only job they could get; these are people who almost all have degrees and could have done something else. It can’t be that bad.
I have enormous respect for the profession and I wish you could pay teachers a million dollars each, but I am very skeptical of claims that teachers are underpaid. Everyone thinks they’re underpaid, even major league baseball players. If teachers are underpaid I find it remarkable that they’re all underpaid to almost exactly the same extent, relative to local standards of living, in every single one of the 50 states in the Union and ten provinces in Canada, across virtually all school boards and private schools. You never hear of some little state saying “Ha ha, let’s jack teacher salaries up to $80,000 and swipe all the best teachers from other states. That’s what they’re really worth.” If they really were worth more why has nobody tried this?
Knowing what teachers make and how many people still cram themselves into teaching programs I see no evidence whatsoever they’re underpaid according to any objective measurement. The salaries aren’t luxurious but they’re quite good, the hours are quite normal for a professional job, and the vacation is astounding; I could work at my job for 35 years and never get the vacation a teacher gets. Pensions and benefits are usually pretty good, too. I think it’s a travesty teachers have to pay for classroom expenses out of their own pocket, but that’s a different issue.
I personaly think most teachers are paid about right, i say this from the fact that my mother was a teacher, and only mirroring her words. Yes we know that teachers take work home with them, so do many other people, im in IT and its very rare that i dont have some kind of paperwork to finish at home, plus the added inconvenience of 24/7 call out. from my experience at school most teachers would mark work in the lessons, leaving you to work your way through exercises. I think the main problem lies with the educationalists themselves, in many subjects the qualification requirements are too high, my daughters IT teacher
has all the university quals, but in terms of IT her knowledge compared to mine is miniscule, yet i would never be considered for a teaching position.
California, Nevada, and Washington state are already doing this.
In Montana, 60% of newly graduated teachers move out of state. California will pay them $35,000 a year starting salary, plus a signing bonuse of $5K and pay moving expenses.
The average starting salary for a teacher in Montana is $19,000.
Well, that’s not how it works for my mother. She not only runs the after-school tutoring program, she runs the summer school program. Other teachers work temp jobs during the summer.
Some teachers get planning periods, but it’s not by any means an industry standard. On a typical day, my mother has to be at school by 7:15am. If she has bus duty, it’s 6:45. Classes start at 7:50, and the kids get a 10 minute recess midmorning. If she hasn’t got playground duty, or kids who have to stay in for some reason, or a parent conference, she gets a chance to go to the bathroom, run off papers, or return a phone call. She then gets a 22 minute lunch break (which time includes escorting the kids to and from the lunch room) in the middle of the day. If it’s day with gym, or library, or music, she gets 20 minutes to catch up on stuff. Otherwise, it’s straight through till 2:30. Then she often has bus duty or car duty, parent conferences, curriculum alignment meetings, or meetings to plan individual education programs for special ed students.
“Quiet reading” time is time to help kids who are struggling with something, or to browbeat overdue projects out of kids. There is no grading or filling in of plan books during quiet time, because there’s not enough quiet time to help all the kids who need help.
Oh, and my mother’s salary (before the tutoring and summer school) is about $38,000. She has a master’s degree and thirty years of experience. Fifty miles down the road, one of my college buddies is pulling in $40,000 working in a hospital lab. She’s got a bachelor’s and 4 years of experience. My best girlfriend’s husband started at $40,000 five years ago (I don’t know what he makes now) with a bacholor’s in computer science.
This also happens frequently within states. In Chicago, there are huge teacher shortages in specified areas (math, science, bilingual, Special Ed). The wealthier suburbs lure the best-qualified teachers away with higher salaries, better working conditions, more tractable students, and less political bullshit. It’s not like in Chicago, where a lot of the average- or well-performing students have been lured away to private schools or magnet schools, and a lot of families who can afford it choose to pay a bit more to live in suburbs with decent educational systems, because they are unwilling to subject their kids to the Chicago public system. That’s the primary reason why my parents chose Evanston when they moved here from the East Coast, and the same was true of all my friends’ families.
My speech therapist friend who will leave Chicago and start working for the Wilmette system in the fall has simultaneously gotten herself a huge raise and rid herself of the need to commute in rush-hour traffic to an awful neighborhood. Is it any wonder that Wilmette, with salaries for master’s-degreed teacher that cap out at $80-some thousand, has an easier time attracting qualified candidates than rural counties downstate that pay in the $20s? It’s a wonder they can keep any teachers at all downstate, even if the cost of living is lower. It’s not that much lower!
Speaking as a professional who has also taught (but only college)…
This is entirely dependent on your location. Virginia, as a right to work state has always treated me (as a professional) as a disposable resource. I could be canned for any reason or none.
Teachers are paid by the year as a salary so they are paid for summer vacation. The rest of us who also get a yearly salary, as I do, get paid for the same year, but work about 50 days more for that same yearly salary. I as a Government worker, earn slightly less that teachers do in this District (with the same years of experiance), but they work only 80% of my hours. We are both “tenured” , both get about the same benefits (they get more holidays that I do, however, as they get "spring break and Xmas week). Thus, they get paid more for working less. And, some teachers work Summer school and get paid more for this.
Now, Teachers were at one time grossly underpaid, and now they are certainly not overpaid . Now- finally they are getting about what they deserve- more or less, varies a LOT by School District & State, YMMV.
As to paying subst out of their own pocket- we have the same thing- it is called “not getting paid when you run out of sick leave”. Teachers have about the same sick leave as I do . When I run out of SL, I don’t get paid- when they do, they pay the Subst out of their pocket- and since subst generally earn less than they do, this is a slightly better deal.
OK. Speaking as a California teacher for the last 16 years:
Some teachers are grossly underpaid. There isn’t enough money in the world to get me to teach in some schools I’ve seen. Combat pay is bedly needed, along with parents that care and administrators with backbones.
Some teachers are grossly overpaid. Play the video, hand out the worksheet, sit on your ass all day. Disgraces to the profession.
Most of us do this job because we care, not for the money.
As the saying goes: If you can read this, thank a teacher.
It is not possible to do biological research on a 40-hour week. 60-hour weeks are really the norm, but funding for these positions is such that overtime is simply not possible.
A highly-skilled biology laboratory technician with a decade of experience gets paid less in a straight-up research lab than does a starting public school teacher around here.
7:15 am? Holy cow! Highschool for me started at 9 pm and ended at 3:15. Lunch was 1 hour and 15 mins (15 mins for homeroom stuff as I recall).
And “quiet study” was literally just sit down and read a chapter kind of thing. It didn’t happen all the time, but it did happen and the teacher would just quietly mark stuff at their desk. I’d rather read quietly than read with the class (differing levels of reading ability made me restless). Again, my HS years are a decade old so maybe things have changed drasically since then.
Well, it’s not like people are clamoring to move to Montana after all. Something about the weather being slightly better in CA.
But still, those Montanas are in for a rude awakening if they think they’ll have a better std of living in CA. It’s very expensive to live here. Move here for the climate and other amenities if you don’t mind sharing the state with 30M other people. But I’ll bet 19k will get you as nice a place to live, if not better, in Montana than 35k will get you in CA.
As someone who makes less than teachers, volunteers to teach reading to the people who were “missed” in school, takes home work, and stays overtime without compensation, I’m not all that sorry for teachers. Good teachers probably deserve more pay. Bad teachers deserve a boot to the street. Identifying which is which seems beyond anyone, so the good will be saddled with the bad draining their paychecks.
Very good points. But I don’t but the “Identifying which is which seems beyond anyone” line. It’s lack of desire to do so, not lack of ability. I work for a very large company and we have full time instructors on staff. Anyone who said these instructors couldn’t be rated like any other employee would be laughed out of the room. It’s done every day without any more issues than other employees have.
Here’s something nobody’s really touching on: most of the salaries being discussed are, presumably, those of teachers in the public schools, for the grades K-12. I live in an area with a large number of private schools, many of them “prestigious”. I think it should be noted that most private school teachers make less than their public school counterparts. A large part of this is surely the existence of unions for public school teachers. I’m not sure what this means WRT this debate, but public school teachers are making more than many of their private school colleagues.
