We don't play out teachers a living wage.

Great Debates
41

Warning…shameless hijack:

I will probably get rained on by rocks (or flamed big time) but: Why couldn’t we standardize the school system…make it a FEDERAL system? It seems to me that the ‘school system’ varies wildly from state to state. The curriculum certainly does, and viewing the posts, so does the salaries…and the quality of the teachers. Hell, even IN states it varies wildly, and looking at it from my perspective, its as unprofessional a lash up as you can get.

In addition, the WAY funds are currently raised is just wierd. I know in New Mexico, there is a hodgepoge of funding, from Bonding to state funds to federal grants, etc. It just seems so inefficient. My company does a lot of IT type work for the schools, and they have a policy called “No student Left Behind”. The jist of it is, from the technology perspective, is for internet in every classroom. Thats a laudable thing IMO…and not just because my company makes money on it.

However, HOW its implemented is just a cluster fuck (not just in New Mexico either…we do work all over the country for various school systems…oh, the stories I could tell). Each school has to come up with their own requirements and figure out what they want/need. These people don’t have a clue how this stuff works OR what they need…and why should they? They are teachers and administrators for gods sake! So, they flail around and either A) Go to big company XX, who sells them T3’s and $20,000 fileservers, and then bolts when their money is gone or B) They get ‘uncle joe’ to come in and do it all because ‘he knows how to wire up telephones real good’.

In the end, to make a long story short, they get crap…crap that usually costs them more and gives them less…and in many cases just plain doesn’t work, not without MY company coming in behind to fix it all. Which cost the schools directly btw…E-rate doesn’t cover that. And, most importantly they get NONSTANDARD crap…they are constantly re-inventing the wheel, every school is a ‘one off’. In many cases, though they have requirements of interoperatability, they can’t do it because of this.

I’m covering technology here, but it goes for other aspects of the school system as well…I’m just more familiar with the technology angle.

So, to get back to my point, which will in some convoluted fashion I’m not sure of yet come to the OP: Why can’t we have a standardized 'School System" that is funded from general federal funds, instead of the hodgepoge we now have (BOND issues?!?! WTF?)? Or, if not that, why can’t we partially privatize the system, awarding a contract or multiple contracts to private companies to run the school system? Wouldn’t this give us a national, standard, school system? Wouldn’t this be much more efficient and give us better bang for our buck? Would that be a bad thing, to have such a standard school system, with a standard curriculum? If we had standard qualifications (and we set those fairly high) wouldn’t that increase the pay of teachers? Wouldn’t our children get a better education out of it? I can tell you that, in the long run, you’d SAVE a ton of money having such a standard system, especially from a technology perspective.

Granted though, the initial outlay of money would probably be significant (maybe even as much as, say, the Iraq war cost us), but in the long term, I can’t see how such a system WOULDN’T be a benifit.

End of my hijack of this thread. If its totally off the wall and irrelevent, I appologize.

-XT

42

Speaking AS a teacher, with 16 years experience:

  1. The pay scales are wildly different across the country. Here in Southern California, with my seniority and coaching stipends, I make a little better than 60K a year. Definately a “living wage.”

  2. The amount of money wasted in districts at the District level is phenomenal. If you want more money for the schools, fire 75% of the district staff/administrators.

  3. Eliminating sports solves nothing. At my high school, football actually subsidizes not only the rest of the sports programs, but a number of other activities as well.

  4. Sports are the only reason some kids come to school at all, or care to pass their classes. The same goes for art and music programs. If that is what it takes to get the kid to care, then so be it.

  5. You don’t do this job for the pay. Sure, I wouldn’t object to them paying me more, but that is not why I am here. I left the private sector for teaching because a) it feeds my soul; and b) it is a job that needs doing, and doing well.

  6. The authors of “No Child Left Behind” ought to be horse-whipped, then forced to teach in Compton for minimum wage.

Just my $.02 worth.

43

What? To what anecdote are you referring?

I wasn’t the one who chose to publish apples-and-oranges comparative data in the first place; I’m not sure why it falls on me to research and publish other data. I said I’d like to see it. I still would. As far as I can tell, the BOLS doesn’t provide a way to cut the data by “all professions.” If the data isn’t out there, fine; my contention is that Walloon should not set up comparisons that are illogical and invite misinterpretation.

I am not trying to “prove” they are paid “less.” Less than what, I’d have to ask. I just think that the original comparison is not realistic and the disparity Walloon’s figures is not meaningful. I happen to personally believe that if you want to illustrate how any occupation fares in compensation, you ought to compare it to occupations which require a similar level of education and investment of time, effort, and money that implies. Of course I expect that the disparity between teachers and other professions would not be the same as the disparity between teachers and all jobs. But as to whether it is merely a smaller disparity or in the other direction (teachers being paid less), I do not know, and I made no claims otherwise.

I’m still chewing on the idea that salaries are tied to what adds value in our society. That’s what I am talking about when I discuss value and importance, not the sort of “values” that represent belief systems (about which I suspect we’d have a hard time finding consensus). I don’t think we really do any hardcore evaluation of what’s valuable (or even define which is most valuable–safety? entertainment? business growth? earning power? public health? voter participation?). We can invest our money (including what we pay human capital) in ways that increase the things on that list, making choices (since they cannot all be maximized at once), but I don’t think those choices are always accompanied by an clear assessment of “values” or “value-added.” When it comes to the profession of teaching, I think there is a lot of status quo at work here. Didn’t matter what their work added to society; you had a ready supply of women to do the work because it was one of the few respectable jobs a woman could hold.

44

Also, can you help me with the concept of “artificially low” as it applies in this context?

45

Silenus:

Great post, and good insights! Care to comment on XT’s proposal to federalize education? In my experience, the bigger the buearocracy, the more waste you expect, the less experimentation there is, and the blander the product.

Nobody ever says: If you want really, really good beer, you buy the big, national brands like Budweiser.
Cranky:

Sorry if I came off “cranky as an old man” in my post to you. I guess I just saw posters throwing out worthless anecdotes, and the only person with any data gets dumped on.
I agree about the “woman factor”. There may still be some holdover from days gone by when teaching was seen as mainly woman’s work, mainly for them to do until they got married, and thus not worthy of decent pay. It’s hard to say.

As for what I mean by “artificially low” I mean a structure built in to the system that overrides normal free market pressures. For example, if the government threw huge subsidies for college tuition if you agreed to spend “x” numbers of years teaching, then the supplly of teachers would be artificially high, and one would expect the pay to be artificially low.

In fact, one might make the case that there is a government subsidy that keeps the perceived value of a teacher’s job low. Schools are funded by taxes, the vast majority of which are paid by a minority of wealthy families. Thus, your average taxpayer gets more education bang for his buck than if he had to pay for it all himself. When the customer gets something on the cheap, they tend to place less value on it. The thinking is: Hey, this is way better than what I could get if I had to pay full price for it, so I’ll accept a lesser quality product.

I’m not certain that analysis fully applies in the case of education, but it’s certainly worth considering.

46

That’s a very interesting way of looking at it, actually.

About the wealthy paying in more… I guess that’s true for the part of school funding that comes from income taxes (federal, which is less than 10% of total, and state, which varies) but it also comes from property taxes. Of course, the rich presumably pay more there, too, but is it still a matter of the vast majority of property taxes coming from a minority of uberwealthy folk?

However, it is certainly true that the direct consumers of education (families with children in public schools) aren’t paying full-freight, so your argument would still apply. They’re getting help not just from the rich, but from every real property owner in their district.

However, in the end, I suspect it’s not so much the idea of accepting lesser quality because it didn’t cost you that much…I think it’s persistent beliefs about government spending, how hard teachers work (those “summers off,” however they actually pan out, seem to be a real hot-button for making the public think the job is cushy), and so on.

P.S. Thanks for the explanation of cranky tone–I see now where you are coming from. Many a time I have been reading a thread, hungry for data, finally see it posted, and then nearly go insane as people argue on without letting the numbers inform their subsequent posts. Walloon, thank you for posting those averages. They were useful, my griping about the final comparison number notwithstanding.

47

I’m glad you brought this up. Why discount the “cushiness” of the job? In fact, that’s one thing that will make pay comparisons different. Teachers do get summers off (if they want), and they have a pretty flexible workday schedule compared to their corporate comrades. Sure, they have to be in school for regular school hours, but if they want to run out at 3PM, say to get a round of golf in before it gets dark, they can do so more often than not. They may have to grade papers or work on lesson plans, but they can do that later if they want. How many corporate types can do that on a regulare basis? Most have to just “be there” at work even if they could just as easily do some of that work later at night in order to enjoy the day more. Of course, teachers do have their own work related hassles (teacher/parent nights, etc), but what job doesn’t?

So, when you find your comparison worker, be sure to take those factors into account.

48

From John Mace

Well, I agree with your size of buearocracy assessment, however, ANY kind of standardization, IMO, would be better than the hodgepoge we presently have.

I’ve thought for years about true privatization of the schools, but I can think of no workable system…and thats the only way to ensure that your beer tastes like Guniess, not Bud. The current local/state system, IMO, doesn’t work very well, and also suffers from a bland product from what I can see…as well as a lack of innovation. Of course these are generalizations, and there are fine public schools out there. But over all, I think this is fairly endemic of the school system.

So, to me, that leaves either Federalization of the school system, or quasi-Federalization, with the government basically funding the system, setting the standards, etc, but contracting out the work, a la what big companies like Honeywell or EG&G do for, say, DOE. Multi-year contracts that can be reviewed periodically by the government, that have limited durations and can be bid upon by other vendors when the contract comes due. It wouldn’t even have to be one huge contract…it could be broken up by region I suppose, with multiple vendors doing their piece…but to the same set of standards, etc.

To get to the point of the OP, if you did the quasi-Federalized system, the jobs would be much more competitive. If you were being hired by Honeywell for instance, you’d have to meet the requirements of the contract AND the vendor. The salary would also, IMO, be much better (overall…some folks might actually lose money, though I doubt it…usually the big companies are pretty good about regional salary ajustments…when its covered by a government contract :)), because the requirements put on the teachers would be more stringent and better checked up on and enforced (i.e. minimum educational requirements, background checks, performance levels, etc).

Is it workable? God knows. Its just something I’ve thought about, off and on, for the last few years. I have a son currently in grade school, and looking at HIS curriculum, as well as looking at the schools I work at, I’m fairly unimpressed with what I’m seeing. To me, we wouldn’t do anything else this half-assed and fucked up, as a society…but to educate our children we just let the situation ride.

-XT

49

Median weekly earnings of full-time wage and salary workers in U.S. by detailed occupation, 2002

50

I’ve got two words for you: vouchers.

It’s the best way to add competition into the system. Make it a reverse sliding scale (the poorer you are, the more you get) if you have to, but give parents a choice.

51

Well, it is hard to compare salaries in one state to another. I make 55K/year as a County Civil servant with 15 years in. That is in Santa Clara County- CA. That salary is not enough to buy a house- houses run about $500K, but in Idaho I could buy a house with one years salary. $50K goes a LOT further in Idaho than California- and is even worse in Hawaii. You can’t just discuss a “yearly salary” without considering what the standard of living and average salaries are for that area.

So here I am earning 55K, with a 4 year degree, and 15 years in. My freind is a teacher for this County. She earns 60K with the same degree, and the same number of years in. She works a 35 hour week (I do 40), and gets 2 months off in the summer. (Note I am comparing YEARLY salaries). She has 10 more paid holidays than I do (Christmas & Spring Break) We get the same vacation time. OTOH, when my day ends- that’s it- but she spends 2>4 hours a day after school working on projects & grading papers & stuff. She is expected to spend about $100/mo on extra supplies, and lose an occasional evening for special meetings & stuff. We both have “tenure”. She qualifies for some special “teachers only” bennies.

We both complain we don’t earn enough out here. We are both right. Both our jobs are important- and here we agree also.

But I think we earn fairly close considering all things. What would you say?

However, PLEASE DON’T GIVE ME THAT CRAP ABOUT HOW WE DON’T PAY TEACHERS A LIVING WAGE! At least out here- and as has been shown- in many other areas- teachers do OK. Not great, certainly not overpaid, and I could agree we could both use a modest raise. But neither of us is starving, we both drive year old Saturns- and most importantly we made this choice.

52

Federalizing the school system, nationwide, would be insane.

I guarantee you that the way the Civil War is taught in New York and New Jersey would not be acceptable in Alabama and Mississippi. Federalization ain’t gonna happen, unless you’re looking for armed revolt.

As to vouchers: I keep hearing that competition is a good thing. But I also keep hearing that the public schools are underfunded. Both are, to some extent, true.

What I fail to see is how taking money AWAY from the public schools will make them better, much less more competitive. And if any kind of voucher system comes into wide use, that is what will happen. Schools that are weak, for some reason, will suddenly lose students (and therefore $$$) to other schools, which will weaken them further. How is this supposed to improve the public school in question?

The politicians would have you believe that if you don’t like your public school, well, there are thousands of nice, clean, efficient private schools within easy driving distance that would be only too happy to have your children.

This is bullshit, frankly. Unadulterated political crap. Even if there ARE a dozen private schools within rockthrowing distance of your house, there is not a single regulation anywhere that says they HAVE to take your child. The only real competition you’re going to see is between the PRIVATE schools.

Meanwhile, the PUBLIC schools, weighed down by laws dictating who they HAVE to take and what they HAVE to teach and what they HAVE to do… will simply get poorer and more screwed up as their funding hemmorhages away.

Then again, the people most in favor of vouchers are the ones whose children already ATTEND private schools…

53

I am not familiar with the policies at all school districts, of course, but the people I know who are teachers are expected to be at school for a set period of hours, hours which would preclude slipping out a 3 pm for golf or errands. I don’t know how to judge my anecdotes against your claim of “more often than not” because I only can speak for a half-dozen districts.

The months off are a wonderful thing for many teachers, but they are not a matter of choice. It’s part of the job. It is a perk for people who can afford to not work during that time, so I’m willing to consider it as a compensating factor for what we might consider otherwise “low” salaries. However, I have mixed feelings about considering it a justification for refiguring a comparative salary, so some migh suggest. There are many jobs which have hours and workday requirements that are higher or lower than others, yet we don’t recalibrate their salaries to make it comparative. Teachers stand out because that time comes all at once, but they are far from the only occupation which has a compressed or unconventional work schedule.

Again, I’ve misspoken if I’ve given the impression I need a single “comparison worker.” If posters are going to offer up comparisons that are supposed to help us decide if teachers are paid “enough” or not, I think they should be compared to a class of occupations sociologists would call a “profession” (educational requirements, licensure, etc).

54

National averages have jack-all to do with how teachers in any given area get paid as compared to groups with similar education and experience in the same area. I don’t know how well you can live on $60K in California, but I do know the hours my mother works, her education and experience level, and how much she makes as compared to other people in the same area who have less education and experience.

My mother is required to be at school at 7:15 am, unless she has bus or car duty. Then she has to be there at 7. Homeroom starts at 7:50, and classes are out at 2:30. During that time, she gets a 22 minute lunch break, and ten minutes for recess (unless she has playground duty, which is once or twice a week, or has a conference or a kid that needs to stay in to work on something). Twice a week she gets 25 minutes while the kids are at music class, and the same for PE. She often has conferences or curriculum alignment meetings scheduled for those times. After the bell rings, if she doesn’t have bus duty, she meets with parents, works with kids who are behind on major assignments, or does some of the never-ending paperwork. Then she works with the after-school tutoring program. She leaves the building around 5, then spends another 2 or 3 hours a weeknight grading papers, planning lessons, making out tests, averaging grades, etc. On weekends, she spends about 6 hours doing more of the same.

So, Mom’s in the school building 10 hours a day, plus a minimum of 2 hours at home, for a 12-hour workday, five days a week. Subtract out her recesses and lunches and gym and music breaks, which total roughly 4 hours a week. Add in the time she puts in on weekends. She works 64 hours a week, if you assume she gets all of her breaks. Multiply this by 36 weeks, and she works 2304 hours per regular school year.

She also teaches summer school for four weeks, at a total of 6 hours a day. That puts her working 120 hours during her vacation, for a yearly total of 2424 hours a year. For all of this, she makes about $38K, for an hourly wage of $15.68. She has a master’s degree and over 30 years of experience.

Let’s compare this to a friend of mine who got her bachelor’s degree in medical lab technology four years ago. She works 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for a total of 2000 hours yearly. She makes $40K a year, giving her an hourly wage of $20. They live about 3 counties apart from one another, so the cost of living is pretty much the same.

My best friend’s husband got his BS in computer science 6 years ago and started at $38K for 40 hours a week. With absolutely no experience at all, he was making $19/hour. I don’t know what he makes now, but I do know that it’s gone up a fair bit. The cost of living in Lexington is a little higher, but not significantly so.

Neither of them have ever been physically threatened in their workplaces, something that happens to my mother with a frightening regularity. Neither of them are held responsible for someone else’s utter failure to get off their butts and put some effort into the job, but it happens to Mom every damn day.

Tell me again about how cushy teachers have it, 'cause I just ain’t seeing it.

55

CCL, I have to admit I am curious as to just how many tests your mother hands out that she spends 20+ hours a week marking them, or why she needs to plan lessons every night. Doesn’t her school board require her to have set lesson plans before the year starts? Around here you can’t start a school year without submitting the year’s lesson plans.

Look, MY mother teaches school, too, and she must be pretty good at it because I’ve seen her performance appraisals and they’re excellent. She doesn’t work 65 hours a week. She works maybe 40-45, a bit higher during report card time. I have five university and high school friends who teach school and none of them work 65 hours a week or anywhere close to it. Your mother is either astoundingly inefficient, an amazing overachiever, or works in the least organized school board I’ve ever heard of, because her working hours are extremely atypical. (She’s certainly paid a very low salary for someone with her education and experience, so maybe it IS a shitty school board. Where is this?) And a atypical case isn’t a basis for changing policy or spending billions.

56

Tests aren’t the only things that have to be graded, RickJay. Homework usually has to be recorded in the gradebook, if not actually graded, classwork must be graded, projects/papers must be graded, and grading a few dozen of anything requires oodles of time.

Ah, there is no way on earth that ANYONE could possibly submit lesson plans for the entire year before school starts. I think you’re confusing lesson plans for the day with a general outline of the curriculum for the year.

Some schools are understaffed, RickJay. This school sounds like an elementary school (correct me if I’m wrong, CrazyCatLady), and they are often understaffed. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that high schools and universities are not understaffed, but the situation isn’t usually as extreme. My high school certainly is understaffed. . .

Yes, because they’re overpaid and underworked :rolleyes: and the remaining 25% will be able to do 100% of the work . . .

57

Average payrates or total funding are bad ways to judge education funding levels or teacher pay. The standard deviations there are friggin huge, even within a given district. But likewise, funding is established at the local level, so it doesn’t really pay to look at national averages anyways. If teachers are underpaid in your district, as they are in mine, the best thing to do is to push for an increase in local taxes and try to get the school board members out in the next election. Now, this won’t work, but it’s the best you’re going to do.

I do think it should be illegal to divide school funds scaled by property tax, or frankly anything other than per capita. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it seems like a violation of equal protection. It makes no more sense than to say the police are going to allow crime in a given neighborhood because the tax income there is too low. When I was in school, the spread in my district would have been comical if it wasn’t really happening. One school, they bought all the students college grade textbooks that they got to keep. They had professional test preppers come in before the SATs. My school, most classes had no textbooks. I don’t mean only a school copy, I mean NO BOOKS. Luckily, I was in the magnet program they put in there to keep the exit exams high enough to keep the doors open. Couldn’t have the poor bla^H^H^H urban kids having to be distributed into the other schools.

58

RickJay, about 10 hours per week of Mom’s workload is the after-school tutoring gig; in addition to teaching that and summer school, she’s her school’s Extended School Services Coordinator. That means she’s the one who administrates the tutoring program and summer school. It’s also the only reason her pay is as high as it is. Without the extra job, she’d be making right around $35K.

As for what she does at home, she has to make up tests before she can give them, then she has to grade 90 of them. Checking 90 math tests and giving partial credit on them takes a hell of a lot of time. Writing out detailed lesson plans complete with time break-downs and page numbers to submit to the school board takes several hours a week. Then there are all the writing projects to be done and graded.

Kentucky requires that all students put together a writing portfolio throughout every school year; there are very specific requirements for what must be included, and how they must be done. Not only does she have to dozens of different writings with her English class, she has to do at least a few of them with all three of her math classes. Those portfolios represent not only hours of grading, they represent hours of riding sixth-graders to get off their butts and actually work. You see, if those portfolios don’t measure up to certain standards, it’s Mom’s ass. So she goes through every single draft with every single one of them, over and over and over, and when they still won’t do anything, she gives up her breaks to keep them inside during recess and bus duty so they can work then.

Of course, the hours I’ve listed don’t include things like dealing with parents who call her at home while she’s trying to work, or her mandatory attendance at every single PTA meeting, or the countless hours she put in for the five years she was a member of the school’s site-based decision making council, or her mandatory participation in fundraisers like the fall festival or the Christmas gift-wrapping booth.

59

I want to apoligize for the mis-spelling in the title, I was kind of pissed off when I started this thread.

Second, I am surprised and delighted by all the responses to my post whether you agree with me or not. And a lot of that seems to be on a state by state basis. I suppose some states really do pay their teachers better than others. I was making a point about where I live, I can’t speak for your state.

Third, there is a point that I haven’t noticed anyone touching on. It’s what teachers have to do to make their living. They have to deal with a lot of kids. I love my kids, your kids are ok, but I don’t want to spend the entire day with them, I don’t even want to spend the entire day with mine. Teachers do something I could never do for any amount of money, they deal with children in large groups all day long. And usually they are alone with them.

I feel that it takes a pretty special person to be a teacher, most definitely I think it takes a pretty special person to be a good teacher. And that’s what I would like for my kids **and ** yours.

I feel like what I’m trying to say is that my post was about more than teachers pay, it was also about the price the kids are paying in diminished learning and decreased expectations. I hate to see the kids lose a good teacher, I hate to see a good teacher leave work she likes.

What does it take to attract good teachers and keep them? What does it take to allow good teachers to work effectively and to educate every child capable of learning up to a degree that will allow the child to become a capable and competent adult? In fact could we dream of getting beyond capable and competent and achieving cultured and informed? Too much to hope for?

60

According to the Santa Monica Mirror, the latest contract with the teachers union sets the starting wage around 35K, depending on background and experience.

35k is not a lot of money in Los Angeles. It is enough to live on, though. If you’ve got a masters in math or science, you’ll start a lot higher.

It’s not that our teachers here are that badly paid, it’s that our class sizes are enormous, the schools in disrepair and there ain’t enough of them, there aren’t enough books for classes and the ones they have suck, some of the schools are in war zones and the LAUSD wastes money like it was monopoly money.