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.
Pasadena teacher who assigned politically charged letter writing to resign*** Williams' supporters say the district proposed firing her in response to political speech. The district denies politics played any part in the decision to fire her.***
The report calls for a stronger history and social studies curricula, starting in elementary school and continuing through all years of schooling. It also suggests a bigger push for morality in education lessons.
"The basic ideas of liberty, equality, and justice, of civil, political and economic rights and obligations, are all assertions of right and wrong, of moral values," the report says. "The authors of the American testament had no trouble distinguishing moral education from religious instruction, and neither should we."***
'Pluralism' manifesto lights a furor - Academic Bill of Rights***DENVER - A Republican proposal to boost pluralism in academia in Colorado has enraged the left, prompting cries of McCarthyism and calls for an investigation.
The flap erupted last week after word surfaced that Colorado Republican leaders are throwing their support behind the "Academic Bill of Rights," a document drawn up over the summer by Los Angeles-based conservative activist David Horowitz.
The eight-point manifesto calls for increasing intellectual diversity in academia by urging universities to seek more conservative professors, include more classics in the curriculum, invite conservative speakers to campus, and protect students who disagree with liberal professors from academic harassment.***
"Some people are income poor and property rich and said, `We can't afford it,' " said Lyons. Others might simply not want to pay for a service they don't use. Public education is an act of community and public faith, a pact between those who use the public schools and those who don't.
The gamble is that making school engaging, which might cost an extra $400 a year in taxes, will add to public life, if not real estate values. But how do you sell something as intangible as educational quality? "A lot of people don't want to support the public schools any longer. They don't feel like they should, and that is a real moral issue," said Arlington School Committee chairwoman Suzanne Baratta Owayda, noting the pressure to pay for programs with user fees. Judi Bohn, Arlington Public Schools partnership coordinator, wonders if the town will lose appeal without excellent schools. "Are we going to end up in a place where people say, `Oh, Arlington is a great place to live, but you have to send your kid to private school,' " she asked.***Source
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People don't wan't to support BAD public education.
In Oregon, we voted down a tax increase, despite the hand-wringing ads run by the corrupt teachers' union, but they managed to get the governor and legislature to sign a budget to raise taxes, so they can have an even fatter budget.
Now, as we collect signatures to reject that increase, teachers are using their classrooms to indoctrinate children into begging their parents to not sign the petition, and giving them propaganda printed up by the teachers' union that summarizes their position.
Because I find it difficult to believe -- not saying you didn't, just finding it difficult. When I left teaching, I found just the opposite. The most classroom time I ever spent was 4 hours and 10 minutes per day (5 classes @ 50 minutes each. Grading papers never took, over the course of a school year, more than 1 hour per day on average. There were other things, similar to what you mention and most of which I was paid for, clubs, director of the school's intraural programs, gifted program committee, test and textbook selection committe, but I almost never remained at school after 4pm. Sometimes I would return in the evening or on Saturday to take tickets or keep score at sporting events. But again, I was paid to attend events other had to pay to attend. They were also all voluntary. In ten years of teaching I never had one mandatory activity on a weekend or holiday.
When I got into business, I found myself quickly drawn into 12-18 hour days, seven days a week.
College graduates with the lowest ranking diplomas become teachers, then administrators.
Cafeterias receive 'commodities' from the Dept. of Agriculture.
Superintendents usually make as much money as Congressmen, but the pay is so low for 'support staff' (the folks that actually DO something) you're better off working at Burger King!
I also should comment on the analogy that is often made between the difference in salary of school teachers and professional athletes. This argument is often made by liberals and is intended to show that priorities in our society are somehow screwed up. How absurd, the comparison. All I have to say to that is that if an Algebra teacher can fill Shea Stadium on a Sunday afternoon for his lecture with millions of people tuning in at home on TV, then all the power to him - he can make $10 million a year too. And maybe Texas Instruments will sign him up to endorse their calculators.
I don't think anybody has a problem with paying teachers well but since (in the case of public schools), they are paid with our tax dollars, it would be irresponsible to pay them a penny more than what the market will bear (and that goes for all public servants).
What I don't understand about our public school systems is the glut of non-teaching personnel that now hang out at our schools - all paid with tax dollars. You got your school psychologists (who evidently are the ones "available for counseling" everytime some kid gets run over by a car or ODs on drugs), your guidance counselors (not one but many), your "outreach" counselors, etc., etc. There are probably more people employed at my son's high school in non-teaching roles than those who actually teach. And on that subject, why are there full-time janitors? Can't they subcontract cleaning services to sweep the floors and empty the trash cans at night like 99% of all businesses now do? Or maybe they can have the teachers be responsible for sweeping up their own classrooms and having unruly students stay after school to sweep the hallways and clean the bathrooms instead of sitting in detention?
Put me in charge of schools and I will get things fixed and maybe get these teachers more money without having to raise any taxes.
As for public school teachers, they do have it pretty good overall. They get the summers off with several weeks during the school year (when schools are closed for winter break, Christmas, etc.). They get this thing called "tenure" which basically means they can't get fired unless they do something really, really bad. And pensions are pretty generous in most places.
At the heart of the discrepancy may well be a reluctance on the part of educators to report campus crime fully.
Many schools prefer to handle crime – even violent crime – themselves, using detention or suspension rather than filing police reports.
This could be one reason why.
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