Posted on 06/17/2006 5:15:15 AM PDT by wintertime
One of the ongoing controversies in the public schools is the issue of teacher salaries. Teachers largely claim they are too low while taxpayers are equally vehement that they are more than adequate.
(snip)
Then there are the actual salary levels. Statistics in 2005 showed the average teacher salary in the nation was $46,762, ranging from a low of $33,236 in South Dakota to $57,337 in Connecticut. Even this ignores the additional compensation teachers receive as fringe benefits, which may add an additional 33% or more to the costs, primarily for very good retirement and health coverage plans. Further, averages include starting teacher salaries, which may begin at $30,000 or less, which teachers gladly mention, but ignore the high salaries of career teachers at or near the maximum on their salary schedule, important because retirement pensions are often based on the best three or so years.
(snip)
Last year, the New York State Department of Education issued a study that reported maximum teacher salaries in that state of $100,000 or more and median salaries as high as $98,000 per year. That is, there were districts, in Westchester County for example, where half of the teachers earned more than $98,000 a year.
A novel approach a few years ago by Michael Antonucci, director of the Education Intelligence Agency in California, compared teachers average salaries to average salaries all workers state by state. First prize went to Pennsylvania where the teachers received 62.5% more than the average employee. That difference is even greater when it is further considered that teachers average a 185 day work year while most workers put in 235.
(snip) Women who had been educators were 7.4% of the total deceased that year but 20.6% of them, nearly three times the statistical expectation were among the affluent few. Former male educators didn't do quite as well but even they were represented among the wealthy decedents by a ratio nearly 1.5 times the anticipated numerical ratio.
Hey, guys, did you know we're rich? ;-)
One thing about teaching--Everyday is different. You just never know what's coming your way!
Student teaching will help you decide. You sound like someone the profession needs.
Good luck to you!
but mostly, they live charmed lives....don't get up as early as most people to go to work....have frequent breaks plus a nice lunch, get to finish work in 6 hrs...
they don't have to work any weekends...any holidays....and summers and spring break and all those lovely three and four day holiday weekends....let's not forget they also can take other Personal days just in case their time off which is extensive, is not enough....
remember also that they get these added "free" days designed specifically so they can work on all those tough issues like how to set up recess time with the kids or how to cram more stuff into even fewer days so they can go golfing or whatever they do....
education students have the easiest course load available..
Wonder how much they'd have to pay most of us on this board to teach there??
That's what I mostly love about it...but some days I get things coming my way I'd rather not deal with! ;-)
Sounds like you'd have liked to have been a teacher. What happened?
Lots and lots of money.
The sad thing is, these little kg babies don't know any better. They are exposed to things in their homes and neighborhoods that no young child should ever see.
It's a big problem to which there seems to be no solution.
I really do feel for the kids, and for all the good teachers who try to civilize them.
Forgive me but you have absolutely NO idea what you're talking about!
It's folks like you who force folks like me to defend how hard we work which in turn makes us sound like whiners.
How do you know what time I get up? How do you know how nice my lunch is? How do you know I finish my work in 6 hours? How do you know I don't work weekends, holidays, or summers?
Unless you are a teacher, are married to a teacher, or live with a teacher -kindly refrain from these sweeping generalizations.
Supers really don't have an easy life.
The 6-figure salary is appealing, but not the workload. It is a job from hell.
If I do decide to go into teaching after student teaching this fall, I may eventually move into a principal position. But, there is no way in heck I would become a super.
Things aren't better now for the nomads, the part-timers who teach for $2200 a course and zero benefits. That's three times a week for 14 or 15 weeks and sometimes the classes have 150 or 200 in them. For this the parents pay $40,000 a year!
Teachers are paid with public finances (tax money) The exxon executive was paid out of company profits he helped the company earn. I believe I read the value of the company increased by several billion dollars under his leadership.
If you move schools, you get put at the bottom of the salary scale, too, don't you?
It is not like another job where you can just switch locations and have a comparable salary to what you left.
Teachers pay should be compared to the industrial wage rate within each county. Start by calculating what that rate was in 1950. Then multiply today's industrial wage times that ratio. Their wages are currently WAY OUT OF CONTROL.
Good point. I should have stated that they don't reduce the workload IF you do it right.
Some teachers, such as one I had in high school, did not do it right. He did a horrible job.
True. Some of the community college payments are pretty low too.
Money Magazine rated a college professor job as the second-best job in the country.
I have considered it, but it just is not worth it IMO. The competition makes competition for journalism jobs look easy.
It is horrible trying to find a tenured position from what I hear and the pay is awful unless you land a good job.
There is just no way I want to go through that.
Not taxpayer money like teacher pay though. Overpaid with under production and lousy results. Not good.
What do you do now?
When I was teaching in PA, I had a choice to not join the union. Did something change in the past 4 years?
I said I was not complaining about my salary, the only part I don't like is having any raise negated by increase in insurance premiums. I'm lucky, I love what I do and the kids I work with.
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