# We don't play out teachers a living wage. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 12, 2003, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754 "2003-11-12T03:13:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/21 "2003-11-13T01:25:55Z")
Teachers around here top out at about $90k. Way too much IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![Neurotik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/91b2a8/32.png) [@Neurotik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neurotik)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/22 "2003-11-13T02:19:59Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by kunilou \* > **No, it’s not chump change, but I’ll bet if you look at the salary scale, you’ll see that your mother is at the absolute top of the scale. She probably has at least a master’s degree, maybe a doctorate, and she either has to or voluntarily continue to take classes to maintain her certification. If she’s been teaching 25 years she’s probably in her mid to late 50s.** She has a master’s and does not have to take classes to maintain her certification, aside from when the district implements a new system like when they went to integrated mathematics, rather than dividing it by algebra, geometry, etc. > [@](#): > > **She will never get another raise, except as an inflation adjustment, because she’s at the top of the salary scale.** Possibly, possibly not. Depends on what the new labor agreement brings in. And who cares if she gets another raise. Making 60+ is very good for someone in their 50s and is not being underpaid. > [@](#): > > **As for your friend, check the salary scale. What will she be getting in 3 or 5 years?** Depends. I can’t remember if he is on schedule 24 or 25, but it’s one of those two. In 3 years he will be making either 43.6 or 44.9k and in 5 years he’ll be getting either 46.9 or 49.3 And both of them get a lot more vacation time than I likely ever will. Although, it’s not all bunched since they are on year-round multi-tracks. They are both paid very well for what they do. If your district is not paying you well, you need to change districts because there are several that will pay quite well. > [@](#): > > \*\*Mrs. Kunilou has been teaching for more than 30 years. She would cheerfully accept her salary if she could give up some of the crap that comes with the job: the endless paperwork, fewer students so she could spend more time with each one, the lack of respect by many of the students and the lack of support from their parents. \*\* Indeed, from purely anecdotal experience, most teachers I have spoken with would gladly give up some salary for lower class sizes and less paperwork. ---
**Author:** ![Jervoise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@Jervoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jervoise)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/23 "2003-11-13T03:04:17Z")
Teachers in my jurisdiction are currently agitating for a 30 per cent pay raise over 3 years. The government is offering 9 per cent over 2.5 years, in line with inflation and wages policy. Without letting my personal opinions get in the way, surprisingly teachers are NOT garnering much public sympathy for their current campaign. The 12 weeks of vacation they receive every year has something to do with this, coupled with the fact that they are proceeding with industrial action (strikes), despite the fact that their case is currently being heard before an impartial arbitration board. ---
**Author:** ![phouka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c5a1d2/32.png) [@phouka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phouka)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/24 "2003-11-13T04:55:42Z")
Oh, yeah, the vacation. Let me tell you about my vacations the past three years. The first year, right out of the credential program, I taught a month long session of summer school. I would have taught two, but my program let out after the first session started. I earned just over $1000 for my time, and had three weeks off (that I spent getting all the paperwork lined up for my first teaching jobs - fingerprints, forms, licences, blood tests, physical, etcetera). My second year, I taught another session of summer school, because I needed the money to pay for the laptop computer so that I could sit down and write out the curriculum I use in teaching eighth grade Writing, English, and Art. I couldn’t use the school computer because it was locked up for the summer, and my district doesn’t check out laptops to teachers. Between summer school and curriculum writing, I had about two weeks off. Last summer, I took two online courses, researched the textbook selection for my English and Writing classes, had my tonsils removed, and then took a four hour daily ceramics course at a community college so that if my school does ever get the ceramics lab put in, I can run it. The three weeks I had off between courses was used up by my recovery from the tonsillectomy. Most teachers I know hold down a second job of one sort or another during the summer - teaching summer school, running a business, working in construction - to make ends meet, because their teaching paychecks don’t quite do it. Me, I do okay. But then again, I’m single, living in the middle of nowhere - which does have a low cost of living - and I don’t have any kids. California used to have a teacher shortage of nearly 30,000 positions. Then, last year that shortage disappeared. Did they hire 30,000 teachers? No, the state budget evaporated, and they ended up laying off something like 3,000 teachers. That gap still exists, but we don’t talk about it anymore, because there isn’t a hope in hell of getting those positions funded. Instead we cram thirty second graders into one classroom and hope like hell the teacher can manage to teach them how to read and write. I’m not saying that teachers deserve to have money showered on them (though, I for one, would not object), but the idea that teaching is a blow-off job because of summer break is laughable. During the school year, the teachers in my district show up at 7:30 a.m. and stay until 5:30 or later. All of us take on extra jobs we spend a hundred hours or more on during the school year, and believe me, it’s not for that $100 stipend added on to the June paycheck. During the summer break, we’re taking classes, working on school matters we don’t have the time for during the school year, and taking on jobs to better pay the bills. Honestly, I don’t know how some of my colleages with kids manage to pull it off. ---
**Author:** ![thirdwarning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecccb3/32.png) [@thirdwarning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdwarning)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/25 "2003-11-13T05:52:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Audrey Levins \* > \*\*With all due respect, **thirdwarning,** I think the problem _is_ widespread. Mr. Levins’ mother used to work for the school district; stories like **T-Keela’s** are not unique. > > In a school system wherein there will always be a shortage of money, I think the emphasis and money spent on sports is absolutely appalling. I would have no problem with all that money if sums that large were available for other pursuits as well–if the balance was equal–but when history teachers are begging for history books, and art teachers have no art supplies, and teachers who feel sorry for their students must go out and spend their own money on crayons/pencils, pens, etc., there is no way the sports budget at most schools is even remotely justified.\*\* Obviously, there needs to be a better balance. I still remember my high school biology teacher complaining about having to do with old textbooks so that money could be spent to purchase equipment for a football program the school was starting. (And the school was no way big enough for a football team.) All I said was that, in contrast to my former opinion, I think sports can and probably should be part of that. And academics have to come first. If there isn’t money for the essentials, there isn’t money for sports. \*\* [QUOTE}And as far as your point about “taking away sports would also mean taking away art and music and foreign language,” haven’t you heard about all the schools across the country who _are_ cutting back on or completely eliminating music classes? \*\*[/QUOTE] I know there are districts cutting back on art and music and “extras”. The point I was trying to make, apparently not well enough, was that if the criterion is whether the student will use it as a career, then there a lot of things that fall into that category. Some things have value beyond their practicality. And as for this: \*\* > [@](#): > > There are many parents out there from poverty-stricken districts who really pin all their hopes on their child becoming a sports star; wouldn’t that emphasis be better put on making sure their child becomes an educated adult with a real chance at college and a career? \*\* I couldn’t agree more. We’ve had a couple of kids from our local high school go to college to play ball in the last couple of years who will not likely get anything out of their classroom experience there. “Dumb as a rock” is probably being kind. Tech school or vocational training of some kind would have served them better, I think. It seems that our schools here are unusual. I assume that some of that is the city influence, pulling salaries up, but the range here is $40K to $80K. My daughter’s volleyball coach/PE teacher makes about $58K, but her AP English teacher is somewhere around $79K. I think those are not underpaid, even for the amount of time and effort teachers put in. I also think that most teachers should be somewhere in that vicinity, or what’s comparable in their area. Obviously not the way things are. ---
**Author:** ![thirdwarning](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecccb3/32.png) [@thirdwarning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thirdwarning)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 6:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/26 "2003-11-13T06:10:21Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by White Ink \* > \*\*I would like to take issue with the person who made the comment about the fine education available at private (parochial) school, and the fact that those teachers are paid less. > > That’s a completely fallacious argument. > > Public schools have a resposibility to teach every child, period. Private schools can and do refuse to admit children with learning disabilities, behavioral problems and other traits that will disrupt the classroom and prevent a good learning environment. > > Add in smaller teacher to student ratios, and a self selecting group of parents who are more actively engaged in their child’s education and it’s really no mystery as to why you can get a better education for lower teacher pay at a private school. \*\* That person would be me. And the point I was trying to make was that it isn’t **necessarily** true that public school education is under par just because teachers are underpaid. The only school I referred to was the one my daughters attended. Yes, there are differences between the two types of schools, but the assumption that parochial schools don’t take the problem kids is just wrong. I know that our small school accepted several students who were expelled or in danger of being so, from the surrounding public schools. The class limit for grades above kindergarten was 28. My younger daughter’s first grade was the largest in the school. (Her graduating class was one of the smallest, but that’s another story.) Obviously there are things that private schools are not required to deal with, but the simple fact of paying teachers more doesn’t mean they will be better teachers, overall. That was all I was trying to say. I think my older daughter’s eighth grade teacher did a heck of a job for the $19K he was paid. I’d guess he’s doing just as good a job for a good bit more money he’s making at a public school now. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/27 "2003-11-13T07:43:27Z")
**Mean annual wages in the United States, 2001** Preschool Teachers, Except Special Education: $20,940 Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education: $41,100 Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education: $43,320 Middle School Teachers, Except Special and Vocational Education: $43,570 Vocational Education Teachers, Middle School: $43,340 Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Vocational Education: $45,370 Vocational Education Teachers, Secondary School: $45,050 Special Education Teachers, Preschool, Kindergarten, and Elementary School: $44,900 Special Education Teachers, Middle School: $43,040 Special Education Teachers, Secondary School: $45,670 **All Occupations: $34,020** _Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics_ ---
**Author:** ![Jervoise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@Jervoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jervoise)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/28 "2003-11-13T08:37:52Z")
**phouka** : I raised the vacation thing, so I should respond. Two things, I guess: (1) Teachers in my state make a decent living. They don’t work second jobs in the summer to make ends meet. They of course complete some training and curriculum development during vacation times, but we’re talking 12 weeks here–head and shoulders above what people in other professions could ever hope for. (2) Anedotes don’t equal data. The figures **Walloon** kindly provides would seem to indicate that your case is the exception rather than the norm. If a substantial number of teachers are working in vacations just to make a living wage, well how does the “average” American worker survive when they earn roughly **$10,000** less than teachers? Incidentally, **Walloon** ’s figures would also appear to defeat the premise of the OP. Unless we care to redefine “living wage” as “earning below $43,000”. ---
**Author:** ![Jervoise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@Jervoise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jervoise)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/29 "2003-11-13T08:39:01Z")
Ane_c_dotes, even. ---
**Author:** ![Nocturne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9fc348/32.png) [@Nocturne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nocturne)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/30 "2003-11-13T11:29:44Z")
I’m very bitter about this because for the last…oh…5 years or so that I lived at home, I didn’t have a mother. Why? Because her school “volunteered” her for multiple things like putting together the yearbook or supervising afterschool programs. I know what both my mother and father make. If my dad wasn’t around, my mom would not have been able to raise my sister and I on her salary and would’ve had to take a second job. She’s been teaching for 30 years and I think her salary’s only increased by about…10,000 or so. Also, while my physics textbook in high school was falling apart and getting taped back together every week or so by yours truly (it was about 15 years old), and all my teachers were having to buy their own dry-erase markers and their own supplies, the school board spent several thousand on re-doing our football stadium. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Negative](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/typo_negative/32/484_2.png) [@Typo\_Negative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Negative)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/31 "2003-11-13T11:41:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Wang-Ka \* > \*\* > Therefore, what we need is to hire good teachers and then arrange for them to teach in good circumstances. > > …and this costs money. > > \*\* Agreed, However, the Los Angeles Unified School District has an annual budget of almost 9 BILLION dollars. (that’s right…BILLION) The money is there in LA. Sadly, it doesn’t make it’s way to the classroom very often. I fear that a lot of administrators, contractors and lawyers are getting rich while some kids go to school in war zones with no textbooks. ---
**Author:** ![Master\_Wang-Ka](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/master_wang-ka/32/3325_2.png) [@Master\_Wang-Ka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Master_Wang-Ka)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/32 "2003-11-13T12:22:50Z")
Well, duh. Why spend money on teachers when we can spend it on legislation? After all, we’ve proven we can legislate quality into existence. Hell, “No Child Left Behind” practically makes it illegal to be stupid… ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/33 "2003-11-13T13:39:54Z")
I think this deserves to be in Great Debates. ---
**Author:** ![Dogface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/34 "2003-11-13T14:15:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by t-keela \* > I made roughly 21K annually starting pay as a teacher in Texas with a Masters degree. Indianapolis _starts_ at roughly twice that amount and the cost of living is probably lower here than in much of Texas. Mind you, that start is for the public schools. Private schools generally pay less. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/35 "2003-11-13T14:59:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by spooje \* > \*\*Agreed, However, the Los Angeles Unified School District has an annual budget of almost 9 BILLION dollars. (that’s right…BILLION) > > The money is there in LA. Sadly, it doesn’t make it’s way to the classroom very often. \*\* Okay, so how many teachers are there in the LAUSD and what’s the mean wage? A rather easy shorthand way of looking at this would be to determine what percentage of education spending is spent on teacher wages and benefits. I wish they could pay teachers more but A) some jurisdictions seem to have a problem and some don’t, and B) money doesn’t grow on trees. In this jurisdiction we have 120,000 elementary and high school teachers. A $5000 raise for each teacher would be **six hundred million dollars.** Frankly, Ontario doesn’t have six hundred million dollars extra to spend, so massive teacher raises just ain’t gonna happen. Now, that’s not to say Ontario is a typical case; teachers are paid pretty well here and the province is bleeding money, so there’s less of a problem and no easy solution if there was a problem. If they pay teachers in Texas $20,000 a year, well, there’s a problem. That might not necessarily be true in your state. But what are the numbers in California/LA? I mean, I think in an ideal world teachers would all get a million bucks a year. Of course, I also think in an ideal world everyone would get a million dollars a year. But teaching salaries are generally pretty consistent from place to place in the USA and Canada, with regional variances; the roughly $40-$45K average that was cited is exactly what I expected. Like it or not, that is probably a reasonably accurate market price for a teacher. If you want to jack it up to $55K, you’ll have to tell me what objective evidence exists that it needs to be that high and where all that money is going to come from. I fully and totally agree that crap like “No Child Left Behind” is, well, crap. I’m a quality auditor by trade and the first thing you look at when some organization makes a bold statement like that is to ask what resources they’ve devoted to accomplishing it. Platitudes don’t teach kids. On the other hand, neither do $20 bills. The statement that “we need to spend more money on education” is probably true but it’s not a solution; first you need to determine what exactly you want to accomplish, and then you determine what resources you need to buy to accomplish it, and THEN you can start budgeting. I have enormous respect for teachers because my mother is one, and because I had a lot of great teachers, but I’m also objective enough to know about human nature with respect to the greenness of the grass and what side of the fence it’s on. Teaching is not a particularly bad job, on average, by any objective measurement. **Walloon** has cited wage figures that certainly do not suggest the average teacher lives in the poorhouse, most teachers have decent benefits, job security is generally better than most jobs, and the hours are normal and vacation fantastic. Complaining about working from 7:30 to 5:30 is absurd; I work more than that, get 3 weeks off a year, have to travel on business and I don’t think my job is particularly unusual or overly challenging. And my salary is about average for a teacher. Frankly, I can get by on my salary. If I could figure out a way to get a teaching certificate part time I’d probably become one. (Regrettably, no such program exists around here.) Teachers are not rolling in money, but what some - not all - teachers do not seem to understand is that **We all face the same problems, folks!** Already in this thread I see that people are really talking about TWO different problems - teacher salaries, and classroom resources. Do we need to spend more money on one or the other or both? If so, how much? And not just ideals; what objective and verifiable evidence is there to support taking money away from other programs to put into your educational suggestions? Not every platitude about education turns out to be true; they said computers would be a Godsend in the classroom and that turned out to be crap (Cliff Stoll was right, by God) and now I’m seeing studies that suggest that the smaller-classroom mantra might not actually have anything to it until you get down to like 14 kids. It may be true that raising the teacher’s salary by X percent will improve educational results by Y, but it might NOT be true. Or marginal return Y might not be enough to justify salary hike X when you find the same money dedicated to special ed or books or something would have done more. Let’s see the hard evidence. ---
**Author:** ![CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crankyasanoldman/32/11670_2.png) [@CrankyAsAnOldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrankyAsAnOldMan)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/36 "2003-11-13T15:47:15Z")
I don’t give two hoots how teachers’ salaries to compare to “All Occupations.” That’s not meaningful. I’d like to see how they compare to “All Professions” or other occupations that require specific four-year specialized degree and some sort of professional certification. That would be truly comparative data. I don’t think the issue is whether or not teachers can “get by” better than the average wage earner. The issue is the value of their work to society and the importance of the task to which we entrust them. ---
**Author:** ![JohnBckWLD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d6d6ee/32.png) [@JohnBckWLD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnBckWLD)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/37 "2003-11-13T17:05:08Z")
Am I the only one who see the irony in the fact that of the 3 R’s, only one of them is spelled correctly? Sorry Wheel, gotta disagree. To reinforce Walloon’s figures - snips from this thread, [What’s wrong with public education, how do we fix it, and how do we pay for it?](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=112282) from GD 6/2002. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by JohnBckWLD \* > \*\*When it comes to teacher pay vs hours worked I see the opposite.[ul][li]Average private sector / civil servant employee: 40Hrs x 50 weeks = 2000 hrs.[/li][li]Average Teacher (My area of the US) 35Hrs x 40 weeks = 1400 hrs.[/ul][/li]That’s not even figuring in the fact teachers only work 5 out of 8 periods during their 7 hr. day (plenty of time to grade papers etc.) > Nor does it take into account very lucritive pension plans, benefits, overtime for extra-curricular activities, overly-generous number of sick days, sabbaticals etc. etc. > Where [this propaganda](http://www.prweb.com/releases/2000/9/prweb18172.php) came from I do not know. > Local taxpayers should be required to pay educators 70% of what other full time civil servants earn. And while they’re at it, demand school boards fire 90% of the administrative staff. > > I’d love to hear an honest reason why private schools need approximately 1/2 the money public schools do to turn out worse prepared students. I think it has very little to do with their favorite scapegoats; the developmentally disabled and high-needs students. \*\* > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Whack-a-Mole \* > \*\*[Here’s one cite:](http://www.heartland.org/education/feb97/salaries.htm) (text quoted below is from this link) > > ## quote: > > ## The Tax Watch survey confirmed conclusions reached by The Heartland Institute in a May 1996 report on school finance reform. Authors Joseph Bast, Robert J. Genetski, and Herbert J. Walberg noted that “the average salary of public school teachers in Illinois during the 1994-95 school year was $41,041 plus benefits, well above the national average teacher salary of $36,874 and enough to rank the state eighth highest in the nation . . . A typical teacher in Illinois works 185 days a year (versus 250 for most other professions) and seven hours a day (versus eight).” Adjusted for hours worked and benefits, the average Illinois teacher’s annual salary totals $76,058. > > Doesn’t look too bad in my book. Perhaps I was mistaken in my impression that teachers deserved to be paid more (I always forget that they work only 9 months a year). Thos teachers that choose to work with students in extracurricular activities are paid for that extra work as well. > > In case you are thinking that source somehow biased here’s the [NEA’s estimate:](http://www.nea.org/nr/nr010515b.html) > > ## quote: > > ## The U.S. average public school teacher salary for 1999-2000 was $41,724. State average public school teacher salaries ranged from those in New Jersey (estimated at $52,174) and Connecticut ($51,780) at the high end to South Dakota ($29,072), North Dakota ($29,863), and Oklahoma ($31,298) at the low end. > > That $41,724 figure jibes very closely with Heartland’s assessment above for Illinois. Adjust for work hours per **JBW’s** numbers and you get a yearly salary of $59,600 which I think is quite respectable. Add in benefits which I’ll guess as worth 20% over salary and you get $71,520. > > In this article, [The Truth About Teacher Salaries and Student Achievement](http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/pubaffairs/we/current/hanushek_0400.html), the author makes the following observation: > > ## quote: > > there is virtually no relationship between teacher salaries and student achievement. > > ## Imagine a world where good teachers were paid large salaries and poor teachers were helped to find alternative jobs. Imagine a world where schools could compete for skilled specialists without having to pay the same to everybody, regardless of scarcity. > > Sounds like a nice notion to me but guess what is standing in the way of much of this? You get an ‘A’ if you guessed unions. \*\* ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/38 "2003-11-13T18:37:42Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by CrankyAsAnOldMan \* > I don’t think the issue is whether or not teachers can “get by” better than the average wage earner. The issue is the value of their work to society and the importance of the task to which we entrust them. Not really. In a capitalist society, the market sets salaries. If there is a significant dearth of qualified teachers, then the pay is probably too low. If there are significantly more qualified applicants than job opennings, then the pay is probably too high. There isn’t a completely free market in the educational world, but it’s pretty damn close. States (and counties within states) compete with each other, and private schools compete with public schools for teachers. Add to that the fact that teachers have a **very** strong union to support them, and I don’t see any evidence that anything is keeping teacher pay artificially low. There is no such thing as what a profession “should” be paid. Only what the market determines it actually is paid. ---
**Author:** ![Dogface](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9d8465/32.png) [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/39 "2003-11-13T18:40:30Z")
Does anybody in the knee-jerk “adjust the wages” faction have the faintest idea how difficult it is to get a job that will pay $30,000 in one summer, reliably, summer after summer? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2003, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754/40 "2003-11-13T18:51:12Z")
> [@](#): > > Cranky wrote: > I don’t give two hoots how teachers’ salaries to compare to “All Occupations.” That’s not meaningful. I’d like to see how they compare to “All Professions” or other occupations that require specific four-year specialized degree and some sort of professional certification. That would be truly comparative data. The why don’t **you** dig up the data? With all due respect, if you posit that teachers are paid less than other comparable professionals, it is you who need to back that up with solid data, not anecdotal information. But even if you can prove that they are paid less, all it really proves is that we, as a society, value teachers’ work less than we value the others’. We may **say** we value their work more, but it’s actions that determine what your actual beliefs are, not words. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/we-dont-play-out-teachers-a-living-wage/212754.md?page=3)