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Get a new dictionary. No wonder you couldn't cut it as a teacher.
Posted on 10/26/2003 1:59:13 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The image of the underpaid schoolteacher who sacrifices life's riches for the sake of children still fits many educators but not all.
Thanks in part to a decade of healthy pay raises and a system of incentives that rewards longevity and postgraduate studies, 1,943, or almost 2 percent, of Georgia's public school educators were paid $85,000 or more last year, according to salary data from the state Department of Education. Among that group, 81 principals had annual salaries that topped $100,000.
"Georgia's average teacher pay rose more than 49 percent over the last 10 years, greatly outpacing national or regional pay rates," said Kathy Cox, state superintendent. "In fact, we rank first among states in the Southeast in terms of teacher salaries."
Indeed, Georgia's average salary of $43,933 in the 2001-02 school year was higher than 11 other Southeastern states and ranked 19th nationally, according to a survey by the national teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers. National comparisons from last school year -- when Georgia's average rose to $45,414 -- are not available.
Lifting Georgia's average were educators such as Judy Henry, who as a third-grade teacher in Paulding County last year earned $90,847.
Henry typifies how teacher salaries rise to the top levels. After beginning her career in Tennessee in 1977, she went on to earn a master's and a doctorate.
To move her pay along, she taught after-school and extended-year classes and received her certification in gifted education.
"If there is any way to make some extra money, volunteer to do it," said Henry, who teaches gifted elementary students. "You have just got to keep looking at the pay schedule. [The top] should be your goal."
Like Henry, most of Georgia's highest-paid teachers receive supplements for taking on responsibilities like coaching, after-school tutoring or summer school teaching. Most of them have postgraduate degrees and more than 20 years' experience.
In Cobb County, teachers who sponsor academic activities can earn from $570 to $2,640 extra per year. Music directors are paid an additional $1,000 to $6,820. Supplements for coaches range from $1,000 to $8,800. Other counties have comparable systems.
For Danny Cronic, whose $90,895 salary made him the highest-paid classroom teacher in the state last year, serving as head football coach of East Coweta High helped push him into the ranks of the top earners.
Cronic, who teaches physical education, received a doctorate from Middle Tennessee State University in 1985.
"All I have ever done is just coach and teach," said Cronic, 57, who is exploring retiring after this school year. "The doctorate came about because I had a principal who gave me some advice. He said if I was going to be in education long-term, I needed to get as much education as I could."
Such decisions have helped move some educators to the top stratum of earners. Households with incomes of more than $75,000 fall into the top one-fourth of all wage earners, according to the Census Bureau.
"I don't think anyone needs to be ashamed of saying they want to be a teacher and not be poor," said Janet Bass, spokeswoman for the Washington-based American Federation of Teachers. "If a teacher has a number of years of experience, a master's degree or a Ph.D., that teacher should be well paid. Just like in any profession, the more credentials you have, the more you are worth to the company, and in this case the more you are worth to the student."
About two-thirds of the teachers in the state have 15 or fewer years' experience, and the state salary schedule for that group is $27,650 to $58,103. The schedule does not reflect supplements.
"By law, a system must pay minimally the state salary schedule," said Bobby Stephens, a senior associate with Metropolitan Regional Educational Service Agency, a consortium of school systems in the Atlanta region. "Gwinnett, DeKalb and others pay a lot more than the state salary schedules."
DeKalb County paid beginning teachers with a bachelor's degree $36,900 last year, the highest starting pay in the metro area, according to Metro RESA.
'A rare exception to the rule'
Most educators leave the profession well before they reach top pay levels, according to the teachers federation.
"We probably have a [salary] schedule in Georgia that pays not enough at the front end and maybe appropriately at the opposite end, but it takes a long time and additional degrees to get there," said Stephens, who used to be director of human resources for DeKalb County Schools. "During that time, a lot of folks drop out. The dropout rate is really high in the first five years. . . . Teachers in the $80,000 to $90,000 pay range are a rare exception to the rule."
Cobb County choral teacher Cheryl DeMenna agrees. "It is impossible for just a regular teacher to make that kind of money. The average teacher just comes in to teach from 8 to 3:30," she said.
DeMenna, who earns $81,590, sometimes works 12-hour days, juggling chorus rehearsals and extended-day classes.
"I don't gripe about the money I make, be it a lot or a little, but [without supplements] I would make substantially less," she said. "If you are coaching or doing extracurricular stuff, you are there before school, after school, on weekends. [You] earn every dime of what [you] make."
The state's highest-paid principal, Bobby Rorie, suggests that the $111,000 he was paid last school year is commensurate with the hard work of being an administrator and the preparation required to become one.
"I don't think teaching is lucrative because of the responsibility that is included in the job," said Rorie, who works in the Clayton County school system. "First of all, you borrow lots of money to get your college education, and then you have to borrow more to get your master's and doctorate.
"Then, when you are finally making a decent salary, you also have accumulated a large debt . . . and at the same time you have got a house, a car and other things you are responsible for as well."
Because of Georgia's pay freeze for educators this school year, Rorie and his wife, Vera, an assistant dean at Emory University, have cut back on spending.
While some are feeling the pinch of a pay freeze, principals at a number of Gwinnett County schools are watching their income grow because of a system that ties pay to enrollment. The school system rewards principals with $7.01 for every student projected to enroll. Gwinnett's is the largest school system in the state -- with almost 129,000 students and 1,530 trailer classrooms -- and its growth continues to outpace that of other counties.
Last school year, the county's highest-paid principal, Glenn McFall of Suwanee's Collins Hill High, received a supplement of $29,021 for enrollment. The extra money accounted for about 27 percent of his $109,160 salary.
Enrollment supplements
If head counts in September show a school has exceeded enrollment projections, the per pupil pay is adjusted upward. In a check of major school districts in the metro area, Gwinnett's school system was the only one paying its principals per pupil.
"The enrollment supplement allows the school system to appropriately compensate principals for the number of students they serve, and the responsibilities and challenges that come with the day-to-day operation of serving those students," said Sloan Roach, spokeswoman for Gwinnett County Schools.
But when enrollment forecasts exceed the number of students who attend a school, the principal is paid based on the forecast.
The administrator is still paid $7.01 per student as if the projections had been met and the students had come to school.
More than 50 Gwinnett principals this school year were slated to be paid for students who were not in their school, according to the September enrollment count.
Principals take the lead
Principals in DeKalb County sometimes get salary bumps to push them above the highest-paid teachers in their schools.
The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools requires principals to be the highest-paid employees on their campus. DeKalb school officials estimated that this year 20 principals benefited from the standard.
"Like in industry or anywhere else, if you have a CEO or a person in charge, that person is usually the highest-paid person on staff," said Mont Bush, director of accreditation services for SACS' secondary and middle school commission in Decatur. "He or she is in a leadership role.
"The difficult part of the standard is where you have young administrators coming on board. Schools usually have three to four years to set up a process of reaching that goal in the event that they are hiring a young administrator."
But sometimes young principals get top dollar without the help of a supplement.
Morcease Beasley, 33, has eight years' experience and earns $94,848 as principal of DeKalb's Stephenson High School.
Not many years ago, such salaries were unheard of.
In 1985, the average teacher's salary in Georgia was $20,606, about $3,000 less than the national average. At the time, the teachers federation ranked Georgia's pay 34th in the nation.
That same year, Jane Stegall -- now one of the state's top 10 highest-paid principals -- was settling into her second year as a department chair at Shiloh High School in Gwinnett County. The move had given her more responsibility and a salary of $27,068.
Stegall had begun her career in 1973 in DeKalb County Schools making about $9,000 a year.
"I made ends meet," she said. "I'm just not the kind of person who worries about the almighty dollar."
But by 1991, with Gov. Zell Miller in office, teachers began to see aggressive state efforts to raise their salary. Miller, who was governor from 1991 to 1999, made improving teacher salaries a priority, pushing through annual raises of 6 percent during his second term.
Miller also backed 5 percent bonuses for teachers who earned the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards certification, the highest professional teaching credential. At the time, only a handful of teachers in Georgia and fewer than 100 nationally had earned the elite certification.
Right place, right time
By 1995 Georgia had moved up to 30th in the state ranking of teacher pay, and Stegall's salary was rising with the state tide. A promotion to assistant principal at Shiloh High also helped boost her paycheck. In a decade, her salary had more than doubled to $56,648.
In 2000, under the administration of Gov. Roy Barnes, Georgia's teacher pay jumped to 19th in the nation. Teachers averaged $41,122, just $700 below the national average.
By that time, Stegall had earned her doctorate and become assistant principal of Brookwood High, making $74,840. Now, as principal, she makes $108,433.
"I was in the right place at the right time," Stegall said. "I am a believer that there are some people who are lucky enough to find their calling in life. I was meant to be in education."
Robert Burke, principal of Fulton's Chattahoochee High School, who was paid $110,333 last year, has also been at both ends of the salary spectrum.
"When I was a teacher trying to support a family, I had to work three jobs. I taught adults at night. I also ran a youth center," he said.
Although lawmakers did not approve teacher raises this year, Superintendent Cox said the state would continue to find ways to reward teachers.
"The trend over the last decade demonstrates that Georgia has put teachers on the forefront of our efforts to improve education," Cox said, "and when the budget situation improves, you can rest assured that we will continue that trend."
National test scores have not correlated with rising pay. Despite ranking 19th in teacher pay, Georgia is 50th in SAT scores.
"It is so hard to evaluate good teaching -- you can't just do it on test scores alone," Stephens said. "It is very difficult to put a finger on performance and associate salary with it."
Just the possibility of a higher salary may inspire more students to pursue teaching careers and more teachers to become principals, said Tim Callahan, spokesman for the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, which has 57,000 members.
"There was a time when educators' salaries were pitiful," Callahan said.
He has the objective evidence of someone who is still working in the job, unlike the opinion of someone who obviously couldn't hack it. Maybe the reason the kids weren't learning in your class was that you were sitting down behind your desk all the time instead of being up teaching, moving around, and helping the kids out...?
You certainly have no reservations about applauding yourself do you. Delusions... Hmmm you ever heard of projection?
It is interesting that you did not refute the my rebuttal of your obvious exaggerations and instead countered with ad hominems and self-laudatory BS.
Oh, and by the way, your comments about my punctuation are exactly the type of petty crap that I would expect from a blow-hard like you,,,,,"!?..
Incidentally, I hope you weren't an English teacher...yikes.
My responses aren't intended to "do me justice", they're intended to provide a measured response to your childish tactics. And it's "riposte".
"I sat down to play poker last night with 7 guys from the brokerage/banking industry. Guess which one of us was the only person not to complain about his salary and how he does all of the work, yada, yada, yada...? (*See, US admirer, that's how you use a question mark*) Anecdotes aren't evidence. You see the complaints teachers make in the newspapers more often because the goals of the liberal papers are the same as that of the liberal teachers unions. Their whines just get more media coverage.
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LOL...Of course I understand that anedotal evidence "is what it is". And you give a great example of it. I mentioned that, lack of hard concrete, certifiable numbers, anecdotal evidence was all I had. But I'm certain of it's validity. You aren't going to persuade me otherwise...at least not today. Hehehe...
Of course your media example is true.... and that exactly is part of my evidence. At least weekly, I hear, read or see "the whine" about teacher pay. And it's not "only" the media..that does it. Although that is the biggest part of the pie.
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You wrote:
Besides, I'm not dissatisfied with my pay (...more than anyone else is). I would just much rather have it be based on my performance rather than on some stupid seniority scale, as I know I would be making a lot more if it was (and many of the lousy teachers making a lot less, which is why the teachers unions... read that as "organizations invented to protect the incompetent"...will never let merit-based pay happen). I never have to worry about being employed, because when you are good at something you can always get a job doing it. I just hate watching the slacker down the hall screw over the kids and my school's general reputation, and still draw the same paycheck as I do...
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Once again...I agree. Especially the part about worrying about being employed...As that is my take also, and how I approach my job.
Best FRegards,
I used to teach orchestra. My two sisters and a brother in law do teach. As far as I know, none of them are making a fortune. I certainly did not.
Being a music teacher sometimes gives you the opportunity to witness others do what you do for a living. I must say that in the music world, there are teachers out there who really have no clue how to get their students to succeed. I do not know the reason -- if it is a lack of knowledge, enthusiasm, drive or whatever. I have witnessed teachers telling students ways to do things in a manner that does more harm than good, and not willing to consider other techniques that might help them be more efficient in the classroom. I have witnessed teachers being completely happy with a poor effort from their students. Successful teachers make an effort to try different things, work with as many students as they can, and not give up when a student just doesn't understand. A battle has to be made between the teacher and ignorance. Many teachers after a few years are happy letting ingnorance win.
My point.... A warm body can complete the requirements to become a teacher, but not everyone has the skills or passion to be a good teacher. Unfortunately, those that do are a rare breed these days.
Get a new dictionary. No wonder you couldn't cut it as a teacher.
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