Posted on 05/09/2012 4:50:49 AM PDT by MichCapCon
The education industry bases pay on degree wickets, not actual performance.
Regarding the broader issue, teachers seem to expect to have their pay be competitive with industry based on degree level rather than on skill. I mean, seriously, how much is someone with a masters degree in education worth outside of schools? So they just say "masters degree" so they are compared to engineers and nurses and people like that.
Putting that aside, assuming all masters degrees are the same, let's look at teacher compensation as a whole and compare it to industry. Hmmm, can't find my company's policy on tenure anywhere. Oh yeah, nobody anywhere in the real world has a guarantee that they can never be fired! Wow, I might take a little less if I had that. Maybe if the teachers gave that up, they could get a higher salary? Oh, that's not on the table, ever. Well then accept that with a guaranteed job for life tenured teachers cannot compare their compensation to anyone in the real world and move on.
This is a red herring.
If someone bemoans there’s “a second-year teacher with a master’s degree making $31,000 a year” the correct answer is “So? What’s your point?”
A masters doesn’t make you a good teacher. I could have 3 masters and I’d still produce a classroom of morons.
The funny thing is equating starting salary (and second year is still the beginning of a career)with anything. I know i had to prove myself and as is the case in the real world prove myself over and over again. Even today in my upper 50’s i have to produce. I have to show my worth. The fantasy world of unions believing they’re owed something for having gone to school.
Very true!! Why does a master’s seem to infer a certain salary level? Ask all the PhD’s on food stamps, not to mention the people with a master’s in social work. They’d be thrilled to make $30,000.
A thing is worth only and exactly what another is willing to pay for it.
I just had a person with a Masters in Social Work ask me for a $10.00/hr receptionist job.
In this economy there are plenty of Masters degrees and PhD’s asking “Will that be for here or to go?”
Does anyone deciding to become a teacher expect to earn six figures? Teachers moan about low pay, yet it is commonly known that they don’t make big money. Life is about choices we make. As far as degrees, I’ve known people with advanced degrees who couldn’t find their butt with both hands, and high school dropouts who were geniuses.
I know a junior high school teacher with a Masters degree that is in her 38th year of teaching at the same school.
She teaches science at a Catholic school.
This year, she will make $49,000.
“Does anyone deciding to become a teacher expect to earn six figures? Teachers moan about low pay, yet it is commonly known that they dont make big money. Life is about choices we make. As far as degrees, Ive known people with advanced degrees who couldnt find their butt with both hands, and high school dropouts who were geniuses.”
.....and they get their summers off plus to weeks of vacation. They are paid for 180 days of work.
Ahhh. Memories....
I attended a prestigious Engineering University. I had 2 roomates my senior year. All of us were in engineering/technology programs. We had girlfriends (two of us anyway). One was in hotel management. The other was in communications. Listening to their "stresses" about their class work became the subject of much ribbing in our apartement. We accepted their challenge to complete all of their homework for one day without having attended a single class. I took on the communications load and one "Jim" took on hotel management. I finished in 35 minutes. He finished in 65 minutes becuase he had to do some research about weather patterns to finish.
Thermodynamics anyone?
New York, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey have teachers making over $100,000 a year. There are other states that have teachers making over $100,000 a year.
Furthermore teaching is a part time job and no my gym teacher did not stay up to midnight grading papers every night and neither did most of my teachers.
Bet you didn’t get any that night!
The big lie in MA is that teachers start in Boston at $21,000 with a Masters. The Boston Teacher’s Union own web site has them starting at $45,000.
I knew that some made $75,000 a year, but didn’t know some made $100,000. I guess that’s the power of unions! It is a part time job—two weeks off over Christmas, a week in the spring, and all summer. I agree that teachers probably aren’t up late grading papers, particularly gym teachers and grade school teachers. The argument is always “why does someone make $20,000,000 a year for hitting a baseball, but a teacher makes $50,000 a year? Teachers are government employees. Baseball players operate on the open market. There are thousands of good teachers in the world, but only a select few can hit a baseball like Albert Pujols, and the market supports it.
At one point, she was selling Superbowl commercials for Fox. At another point in her career, she had some impressive media people's personal cell phone numbers in her business Rolodex.
Now she raises our children and runs a couple small businesses out of the house.
As it turns out, I married up. :o)
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