Posted on 05/30/2012 8:23:33 AM PDT by MichCapCon
Rockford Public School high school teacher Craig Beach wrote a column for MLive in which he alleged that Republican lawmakers are ruining the teaching profession and talked about a colleague’s daughter’s views on teacher pay.
Beach quoted the young woman criticizing the teaching profession’s “extremely low pay” with “I want to eat and have a life.”
The article quotes the young woman as saying: “Mom, I know what goes into the profession. You demonstrate the many hours put in after leaving school, the stress, the lack of respect and now extremely low pay. I want to eat and have a life. I am not ready to invest another $20,000 to make what you do."
A first-year teacher at Rockford with a bachelor’s degree would have a starting salary of $37,184 and that would bump up to $40,537 with a master’s degree.
According to PayScale.com’s 2011-12 annual survey of undergrad college degrees starting median salaries, that first-year Rockford teaching salary is on par with degrees in advertising ($37,700), biology ($37,900) and human resources ($37,900). The Rockford first-year salary is better than the median starting salaries for degrees in fashion design ($36,300), health care administration ($36,700), hotel management ($36,100) and public relations ($35,500).
And that first-year teacher wouldn’t stay at that starting salary for long. The average teacher’s salary in the Rockford School District was $62,351 in 2010-11, according to the Michigan Department of Education.
Leon Drolet, president of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, said he agreed that the young woman Beach highlighted would not be right for the teaching profession.
“She should not be hired (to be a teacher),” Drolet said. “She should take a job where she can ‘eat and live’ and let someone else who can ‘eat and live’ on $50,000 and $60,000 a year who is eager to do that job at that salary. I would be interested to find where those places are. If they know of a secret place that gives them more pay, gives them better benefits and gives them more time off, they should go there and let people who are interested and passionate about teaching have those jobs. Let them go to their secret, mythical place.”
Beach didn’t respond to a request sent to his school email address seeking comment.
I was deliberately trying to lowball it, running with the framing as presented (implying normal 2000-hour work year) - then spinning it with the context of someone starting out with no dependents and optionally nigh unto no expenses. All that vacation time leaves plenty for a second (and third) job, and/or building a tiny house from scratch on cheap property.
Too many buy into a common narrative, then complain that it doesn’t work out for them.
For just one person???? 414.25 sounds pretty awesome to me!!
Of course you can’t eat out all the time on that and buy whatever the heck you want, so I guess you can’t eat and live. So sad.
I could have given him a lot more discretionary income with a used car and a two bedroom with room mate to split expenses but I decided to give him all the "necessities of life" a slightly spoiled middle class college graduate would think he deserved.
It still ends up pretty nice.
Again, their argument is that the perception is that teachers are starving and overworked. They are correct, that is the perception.
They have not said that teachers are starving and overworked.
>>I am assuming that you are speaking of “right to work” states. I guess I never thought about the impact on “public” unions, I always think of that in terms of private companies. So, in a “right to work” state, the state CAN fire an incompetent teacher after three warnings?
Definitely. In a “right-to-work” or “non-union” state, unions do exist but they are voluntary. I have known teachers that have been fired (more likely “forced to resign” at the end of their contract so their reputation is not damaged), but an especially deficient 1st year teacher was fired “with cause” at my school this year. Furthermore, four teachers were laid off because of budget cuts 2 years ago, and teacher’s pay were furloughed 5 days, in addition to a salary freeze for the last 3 years.
It isn’t all roses, and I really wish the union teacher states would stop bitching about the amount of money they get with the lack of responsibility they have. I’d like to see some of them teach Scarlet Letter to my regular English students with a 90% final exam pass rate.
>>I do not know of any teacher having paid vacations or holidays. In GA they get 12.5 days of sick leave, but no paid vacations or holidays. They are only paid for the days they work.
In SC they get 10 sick days and NO PAID VACATION. Our district is awesome because we teach with no vacation days, no “teacher days”, and short vacation (Thanksgiving 3 days, Christmas begins on the 21st and ends on the 2nd). If states really want to improve the instruction, make payroll a mandatory 85% of district school revenue and make pay merit based.
“I am assuming that you are speaking of “right to work” states. I guess I never thought about the impact on “public” unions, I always think of that in terms of private companies. So, in a “right to work” state, the state CAN fire an incompetent teacher after three warnings? “
Not necessarily 3 warnings- in NC we get put on an “action” plan for a school year and then canned if there is no “improvement”. Tenure here is just automatic contract renewal if the administration doesn’t deem a teacher as a problem.
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