Teachers' poor pay just myth

Scottsdale Republic ^ | Craig J. Cantoni

[hsmomx3]

Contrary to union propaganda, teachers are not underpaid. I say this as someone with 28 years of experience in conducting salary surveys and designing pay plans.

According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, local elementary school teachers earn about the same average pay on an hourly basis as local reporters ($23.74). They also earn more than microbiologists ($20.60), zoologists ($17.36) and accountants ($22.49). Secondary school teachers even earn more per hour than civil engineers.

[Porterville]

True, but only tenured teachers or teachers on a tenured track; 2/3 of higher education teachers are part-time like myself. I'm broke, but I teach as many classes and students as full timers who make 75% more money than associate faculty. I have more degrees than most of the tenured track teachers. The secret with full timers, is nepotism, in all levels of the educational industry.

[AD from SpringBay]

This is just wrong. We need to raise property taxes, build more school buildings, hire more administrators, give teachers raises, and start new papertrails - that's the only way to fix this nation's schools </liberalkneejerktoschooproblems>.

[VRWC_minion]

Next time you are at a school, check out the cars the teachers are driving and then compare them to the cars the parents are driving.

[wardaddy]

I disagree. I know teachers who teach in urban schools where kids come from fractured families or serial illegitimacy.

I agree that the teacher's unions political aims have been incredibly destructive..no doubt, but we now have a slew of unmanagable kids in many of our urban areas. DC is a perfect example...more money per student than just about anywhere yet the schools are horrible....that blame cannot be laid directly at the teacher's feet. I would venture that 75-80% of those kids come from the hood with no clue as to how to behave in a civil fashion.

The disintegration of our public schools has paralleled the rise in divorce and illegitimacy almost lockstep.....in particular in the black community with regards to the latter.

[babyface00]

If anyone doubts that most public school teachers are overpaid, go to your local board. Salaries are public knowledge.

You'll be unpleasantly surprised, not only by the salaries of the teachers, but also by the layer upon layer of overpaid administrators.

Also, in most districts, salary increases can be had simply by obtaining another degree. You'll find many get the bare minimum education possible a the local community college to get that piece of paper so they can get their raise. Typically, the subject of the degree needs not to have to do with their teaching duties.

The more I dug, the more disgusted I got a the teachers' (and their unions') incessant whining.

[GodBlessRonaldReagan]

Glasses, not fugly though, and no Munchausen I know of.

[Porterville]

Look, most teachers at the community college and university are part-time, we make nothing.

[VRWC_minion]

Long term prediction:

For decades the image of teachers has been one of underpaid devoted servants who value our children more than themselves and whom we are forever beholden to.

I see a quiet backlash forming. The ingredients to this backlash will come from the presure that the No Child Left Behind law, vouchers, state budget shortfalls, icnreased teachers salaries.

[babyface00]

I don't think anyone here is talking about teachers at the college level. Primary and secondary public school teachers are the subject of the discussion, unless I'm mistaken.

[Clara Lou]

Just so that you understand that it's not the same everywhere, students begin their day at my school at 8:25 and are released at 3:45. However, I had to be there this year at 7:50 and remain at least until 4:15. [8-1/2 hours, minimum, but who leaves work on time?] In Texas, teachers don't get a "lunch hour." We get a lunch 1/2-hour, the same as students.

As to benefits, we don't get "governent benefits," Our school district created its own "risk pool" to offer a health care plan to its teachers. The district chips in a certain amount, so that I guess you might label that "governemtn benefit." It's cheaper than other plans out there, unless someone has a catastrophic accident (as happened about ten years ago). Then we members of the risk pool pay higher rates for several years to make up for the claim.

As to retirement, teachers pay a portion of their salary into the state teacher retirement fund. The state has a multiplier that it uses to chip into the fund. Teachers in Texas are not able to draw Social Security because of their years of teaching. If they've had jobs outside of teaching, they may draw it.

All of this is just so you know that what goes on in your state doesn't go on everywhere. [I do argue with the assumptions you made when you posted your original comments.]

[cogitator]

Where else can you go to work for 6 hours a day, for 9 months a year, and make a decent living.

Any teacher worth having does not work a six-hour day. There were some recent job actions here in Maryland where some teachers worked according to their contract; this ticked a lot of parents off who had come to expect that the teachers would come early and stay late to provide what amounted to non-contract tutoring. And most of the teachers had been doing just that.

[cogitator]

Next time you are at a school, check out the cars the teachers are driving and then compare them to the cars the parents are driving.

An excellent reply, sir.

[Clara Lou]

Teachers have to be at school a half an hour before it starts, stay after school for a half an hour around here, and get NO lunch hour. They can't leave the campus, and have to take turns doing "lunchroom duty". As for me, I'd rather take a beating then spend a 30 minute lunchbreak in a public school lunchroom! :)
That all sounds very familiar. I draw the line at spending my half-hour, supposedly duty-free lunch in the school cafeteria.

[Clara Lou]

Here at my school, most of the teachers drive the smaller-sized pickup trucks and mid-sized American cars. We have one teacher who drives a BMW (a student stole the hood ornament), but her husband has for years had a large, very successful air-conditioning business. One other teacher drives a rather new Cadillac, but her husband is a doctor. That's our parking lot.

[Diva Betsy Ross]

I understand what you are saying, however the NEA and union teachers have no one to blame but themselves. Parents are told, as a whole, that the teachers and NEA always know best. They encouage parents, again as a whole, to turn the kids over to them because only they know how to teach and what a child needs during development.

What most teachers really want is for parents and taxpayers to never question what they are doing , for taxpayers to always , belly up to the bar and for parents to always do as they say , how they say to do it and thank the teacher for being so wise at the same time.

Sure inner city schools districts are by and large horrible, but there are lots of kids in the burbs as well. If people don't want to teach there and try to amke a difference, then they should no taccept the job. There are thousands of things people can do. If they went into teaching because they want to have summers off, they get that at almost any school district.

[Diva Betsy Ross]

Right, Teachers get to include driving time to and from work, say they never get to eat and compalin about having to work with children and do 1/2 hours extra work at home because they were socializing during their "lunch hour bloked off time". WHAAAA I want more money because you aren't giving me the money for nothing. WHAAA......

[Mr. Bird]

The quickest way to raising the level of education kids get in public schools is to eliminate the Department of Education and allow states (and then municipalities) to develop programs that work. The teachers' unions need to be fractured into at least 50 different entities. For the life of me, I don't know why a person of talent would belong to a union. Who wants to get paid the same as the slug co-worker just because you've been on the job for the same number of years?

[hsmomx3]

I turned on talk radio about an hour ago to hear Barry Young of KFYI (Phoenix), discuss teacher pay and how it costs homeschoolers far less. He also went on to say that homeschoolers excel in the geo./spelling bees as well as standardized tests.