Teachers' Roles and Their Pay

Curious about historical trends in the US, I Googled "average teacher salary 1960" and came up with this article entitled, "Losing Ground. I admittedly skipped the text and went straight to the tables, which showed an interesting downward trend of teacher pay compared to non-teacher pay. In 1940, teachers actually made more than the average non-teacher. In 2000, this clearly wasn't the case as male teachers' income was 60% lower than non-teachers (16% lower for females).

So, I won't try to provide any sort of assessment. I just thought those numbers were interesting and relevant to the topic.

Let me preface this by saying that teachers are underpaid and it is an incredibly important job that is clearly underappreciated.

Lets say that an average teacher pulls down $40,000 a year - for 9 months work. The summers are off right? Then, they get off of work in the early afternoon, get the weekends off, and don't work nights (except for the occasional parent-teacher night.) Grading papers is a little overtime, but then, it can be done on the couch at home with CSI running in the background. (And I'm not entirely certain its all that much work; once I established myself as an "A" student in high school, I don't think anyone actually read my papers. Or, at least I still got an "A" on my 11th grade history paper where I included a paragraph in the middle of it about the wonders of the Butterfinger.)

Lets contrast this, then, with a police officer, FBI Agent or officer in the military. I'm most familiar with the latter (obviously), and can tell you that a Captain with 4 years experience gets less than $50,000 for a year in a combat zone where he works all 365 days. Now, I've picked up 2 years experience since then, and make a good bit more. I had briefly considered alternate career options, so looked into what an FBI agent makes. They get less than I do. Texas Highway Patrol? About half what I do. The Border Patrol? Fuggedaboudit.

I don't mean to imply that teachers are less important or heroic than security folks. My hat is off to teachers, especially the ones that teach really young students. I've stared down 3000 Iraqi's throwing rocks at me, but I'm not quite ready for a platoon sized element of ankle biters running around.

What I do mean to imply is that when you work for the goverment - local, State, or Federal - you're gonna get hosed on the paycheck, and that the payback is job satisfaction and knowing that you are responsible for the betterment of society.

I live in a small community in South Central Pennsylvania. A small town south of me has roughly 2,000-2,500 students enrolled. (for those interested, it is Littlestown, PA) The teachers just returned to class today after being on strike for 2 weeks. The reason for the strike? Healthcare...the district wants the teachers to foot more of the bill for their health care. Currently they pay 7%.

I'm a non-government worker in the IT industry. My current salary is not much more than their median salary (of 158 teachers in that district) of $47,331. Granted, I chose to work for a smaller company, I could do better in larger enterprise I'm sure, but I like where I live and don't really want to move to a larger city. I did work for a large water utility, until it was purchased by a foreign company, I still paid the same level for my health care, just the price was a bit cheaper.

I currently pay 35% of my health care--with an $1,100 deductable. The finding of fact from the PA Labor Relations Board made these recommendations for Health care costs:

2005-2006: 8.5%

2006-2007: 9.0%

2007-2008 and 2008-2009: 10%.

Contributions are retroactive to July 1, 2005.

There were other issues, including spousal coverage, prescriptions, and Co-Pay (Doctor and ER).

There were other issues as well, including raises (amounting to a total of a 17% increase) over 4 years. To be asked to cover an additional 3% for healthcare out of this doesn't seem to be a lot to ask, IMHO.

The economic impact of this goes beyond just a few teachers not being paid for a couple of weeks. There may even scholarships lost because of the cancelled football schedule. There were games missed by the Football team, where some seniors might have been looking for scholarships and now may have missed that chance. Many families had to find alternative day-care for younger children (I know some who did) which has a cost associated that wasn't expected. The school system will have to make these days up at the end of the year. As a result, there may be families who have children in the distrct who now may have to cancel (and forfeit) deposits on their vacation housing everywhere from from the Jersey Shore to Myrtle Beach, because they have already scheduled their vacation for the week after school lets out.

I agree that teachers start early (a lot of times) and finish late. I concede that they have continuing ed responsibilities (as do I-certification exams that are required for my performance reviews-which is how I get a raise as opposed to a 'guaranteed' raise, regardless of my performance.

Taxpayers such as myself are the ones who foot the bill for these raises and healthcare. It's not just the cost of raises either, but everything else too. I have a friend who just lamented to me that next year, about half of his mortgage will be taxes--both property and school. Granted, most of this is thanks to the Borough voting in favor of building a new school and remodeling another because of another issue involving zoning and single-family homes versus townhouses/apartments, but he still has to pay the taxes. We the Taxpayers are growing weary of the constant issues between school districts and the Teachers Unions; we're tired of paying the bills for everything.

This community has a lot of retirees--many are considering moving, thereby reducing the tax base. The borough only has 7,000 Taxpayers in a community of 14,535 (2000 Census, I'm sure it's at least 20% higher now). This is what happens to large metropolitan areas: you get single family homes turned into rental properties who pay proportinally smaller taxes per resident. This causes an ever-decreasing local tax base and suddently you're bankrupt as a community. This all has to stop, but where do you draw the line?

Some of us have proposed getting 'corporate sponserships' for new schools or addtions--let Starbucks put their name on things in return for a few hundred grand back to the district annually. Stop making tax concessions to attract businesses- if all communities stop doing it, then it's not an issue. Start putting revenue from gambling back into the schools; our lottery here already is used for Senior Health Care, why can't the 61,000 slot machines we're putting in have their revenues put into the coffers of the School districts? Add another one percent to the sales tax and put it BACK into the community it came from, rather than into the General Fund. Consolidate the several hundred school districts--there are 5 school districts in an area not much larger than my old home town--with about the same number of students. That town is all one district, why can't we be here? Doing this would eliminate a number of administrative jobs and save money. If the State Education departments would actually THINK for a change, there is much that could be done.

For reference,here's the link to the finding of fact in the Littlestown contract dispute:

http://www.dli.state.pa.us/landi/lib/landi/plrb/fact_finding/littlestown_area_school_district.pdf

In Texas the rate is higher! Go to school for four years and when you graduate prospective teachers face job market puzzle.

One way is to throw out bare numbers and provide no means of comparison. The trick here is to let the audience make up their own numbers for comparison. If the audience is selected well, their choice is likely to be biased.

In this case, the audience is OmniNerd readers. Nerds, being smart, often get paid well - at least, the distribution is likely to be skewed that way. YMMV. So we throw out a number and say teachers make between around $30,000 to around $50,000. The well-paid OmniNerd reader responds, "is that all?". OTOH, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the average income in the US to be around $37,000. So the teachers are making about average. Why is this "underpaid"?

Yes - teachers have a difficult job. On the other hand, they're surrounded by a bureaucratic morass that ensures that, should we decide to dump *more* money into education, the teachers won't see much of it. Instead, we'll see idiotic initiatives that ensure every fourth grader has a Palm Pilot (not a hypothetical scenario).

The article also lists the many things teachers do *besides* teaching. It negelects to mention that very many teacher seem to be satisfied doing *only* these non-teaching tasks. A relative of mine teaches in an area elementary school. She's commented on a number of her colleagues who can't do simple fractions. While I understand that a first grade teacher doesn't need to teach fractions, even a first grade teacher who doesn't know pretty much all the material through high school is, by any reasonable standards, incompetent.

A high school teacher I know has commented that one of his colleagues routinely disregards the county approved curriculum standards on the grounds that it's "too hard" for his students. Sorry - not his call. And it's a major failing of that school system that he hasn't been disciplined for it.

The *real* reason teachers are underpaid (IMnsHO) is that we don't have any confidence that giving the educational system more money will have any real effect. Sure, maybe if we doubled or tripled the education budget, we might see a noticeable change. But that's not realistic. Instead, we need to look for ways to cut the fat. Teachers need to be accountable. And the non-teachers in the educational system even more so.

The 60 Minutes segment "Stupid in America" made a lot of good points. Let's get a little competition in the system. There's a reason that companies like Kaplan and Sylvan make so much money. The school system fails to meet the needs of a whole lot of kids, while the commercial products do. They work. If they didn't work, the companies would go out of business. Compare this to school systems that get less effective with each passing year. With no competition, there's no real reason to improve.

Why is there this obsession with the pay, treatment, and benefits of teachers? Why not engineers, astronauts, or tax collectors? They all do important work and probably don't get enough money. Actually, who doesn't do important work? Even the kid working down at McDonald's is providing an important service to the economy. So what is it about teachers that makes everybody go nuts and pay such deference to the sacred institution of teaching?

And what bothers me even more is that teachers seem to be on a constant crusade about how under-appreciated they are, but they throw a fit every time anyone asks them to be held accountable for their product. Nobody else could get away with that. Can you imagine an engineer telling people all day how they can't get to their work over the river if it wasn't for his bridge and then gettingn all super offended when people are upset that his bridge collapsed!? When teachers start owning up to their product, I'll start listening to their gripes.

In the CHicago metro area, teachers work nine months of the year. On top of those three months off every summer, they get every bank holiday, National Holiday and even Holidays off most of us have never even heard of.

- Most EVERYONE I know works 50 hours per week. This does NOT include their uncompensated commutes

-Presuambly educated Teacher ought to know that they can deduct out of pocket expenses oin their 1040: "un reimbursed business expense"

- Is it a surprise to someone who wants to be a teacher that the will work with a roomfull of students, some with head colds

- As to compensation, the averaqge pay here where I live is in the range of $80K. Then there are the school adminstrators who get compensation in the range of $300K

Teachers here do nothing but press to strike on issues that do nothing for the kids ands do nothing but line their wallets and fatten their pensions.

In this locale, teachers are their own worst nightmares.

There are plenty of regulations and laws that keep unbridled competition of the capatilistic system in check. How about a little competition to improve the teaching industry? How about some school vouchers for the inner city kids trapped in poor schools, many with teachers who can't pass certification exams? I challenge you to look into how many math and science teachers actually majored in math or science - less than half at any given school usually. My son had an honors English class, the only class taught by the department head, who makes $100,000 for 9 months of "work". When teachers have to compete like everybody else in the workplace, then their pay will find a level where it belongs, as determined by the market.

you are so right!