Add in the pension and retirement health benefits, current benefits, and divide by the hours worked over their careers, and teachers are paid better than nearly any professional. Teachers would like to paid like the most successful neurosurgeons at the **peak** of their relatively **short** careers. Unlike professionals who require many more years of schooling and many more years to build their practices, teachers have the opportunity to work 30 or 40 or more years.
Also...teaching is not an academically competitive career. Low SAT scores, community college followed by a local state university with **minimally** demanding courses and no science and math courses ( or grossly diluted courses) is all that is needed. And...Sadly, too many masters degrees in education are a joke.
It is possible to qualify for a teaching position with minimal student loan debt, while in their early 20s. My local dentist, however, started his career with a quarter of million in school debt and another $400,000 to buy the practice. ( Really!) How many teachers are willing to take on **that** financial risk in this economy?
The truth is that if government schools were to close tomorrow, most teachers ( yes, “most”!) would barely be qualified to be a shift manager of the local carry out. They would struggle over fractions, decimals, and percentages.
I am sure that there are socialist school teachers who work very hard, and are very dedicated to helping the children in their socialist school's godless classroom, but the above is the truth. I am certain that some teachers are very very smart, too. I know a few myself, but since on **average** teachers have low SAT scores what does that say about the really dumb teachers who are averaging out those who are smart?
Oh....And someone is bound to get in a snit because I called government owned and run schools socialist and godless. Well?...If anyone knows of a government owned and run school that is not godless in their worldview and not a socialist and single payer entitlement, please send me a link.
What you said. I know there are a lot of fine people in the system, but the system is inherently rotten and Marxist to the core(Anyone remember the school kids somewhere singing a praise song to Barak Hussein Obama, mmm mmm mmm).
My daughter is an AP Calculus teacher and she would completely agree with you. Somewhere along the line while majoring in math at Boston College she decided to get certified to teach. Although she was enrolled in the highly competitive Business school, she had to take some classes in the Boston College School of Education. She affectionately referred to it as the School of Dead (instead of School of Ed) or S o EEEEEEEz (instead of SoE).
She does say that she's noticed in the last 5 years or so that many of the teachers fresh out of school are not the idiots their predecessors are.