Posted on 02/02/2007 8:55:08 AM PST by dashing doofus
Who, on average, is better paid—public school teachers or architects? How about teachers or economists? You might be surprised to learn that public school teachers are better paid than these and many other professionals. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, public school teachers earned $34.06 per hour in 2005, 36% more than the hourly wage of the average white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty or technical worker
(Excerpt) Read more at manhattan-institute.org ...
Some teachers do and some don't. It depends on the school district and the options made available to the teacher.
Wow --
My in-state for Texas . . . having gone back in Summer '05 is as follows (note these are totals including ALL the misc. craptastic fees they charge us):
Summer '05 4 hours $849.71
Fall '05 12 hours $2450.47
Spring '06 18 hours $3542.63
Summer '06 9 hours $1883.72
Fall '06 15 hours $3223.20
Spring '07 18 hours $3594.85 (present semester)
For a total in two years of $15,544.58. Due to my "age" and the fact that I stayed home with my children and provided wifely support to my husband as he built his career, I am not eligible for many scholarships. My loans are unsubsidized due to his salary. The amount that a family is supposed to provide is absurd for ALL students. That being said I've gotten one scholarship for $400 and one grant for $750 (both last summer).
Keep in mind this does *not* include living expenses, food, transportation or textbooks (books have been anywhere from $200 - $500 a semester -- with this semester being on the higher end).
That all being said, I'm a Speech Language Path major. I know people in the education department and I am SO . . . annoyed by them much of the time. I know drug addicts and girls who are essentially idiots -- but they are getting A's in their education classes. Would I want them teaching my children? Heck no!
Some teachers, yes, are underpaid. Are they all? No. Do they deserve more? Some of them. Salaries are commensurate with the degrees and time worked though. So many "educators" seem to forget that ALL of us come out with loans and the like. If I go out in the field as an SLP -- I might make 40K a year -- and have to prepare things "off the clock" for clients, and I have to work year round. In the schools, SLPs are actually paid on an adminstrator's pay scale rather than an educators *shrug* Ironic though that we don't make much more (if any) and we HAVE to have a MA or MS to be licensed.
Oh -- yeah -- I'm finishing my undergrad with 21K in student loans, and I'm going on to graduate school. So who KNOWS how much I'll owe then. So to all these teachers, I say, QUIT WHINING. Everyone's jobs have their challenges. EVERYONE I know works "after hours." Want to compare how much out of the office time my husband spends "off the clock" to any teacher's time grading papers?
</ends her vent>
Not complaining about a duplicate post, I'm just providing a link for those interested in other comments on this subject.
Only if you take a bunch of courses you DON'T need.
Anyone paying $20,000 per year in college tuition for 4 years to get a degree in Education and teach - illustrates why salaries in teaching are exactly where they should be.
Sorry, I wasn't clear. What I meant was, pay is based on the 180 or so days of the school year. Some districts payout over 12 months, others over 9, yet others give the teachers the choice. My district gives me 24 paychecks (2 per month) but they are for the work I do between Aug and June. Getting paid in the summer is not the same as getting paid for work in the summer. Sorry I wasn't clear.
The number the person gave was inflated, but you have to take 120 hours to graduate with any degree, so you are required to take class you do not need.
Not unless they choose to have their pay spread over 12 months. They are on 9 month contracts in my wife's district.
Very well stated, my friend.
If only all teachers were like you. I have read message boards where teachers did nothing but bash their students. I was really shocked last week when a teacher told me (after mentioning over and over that she was a school teacher as if it made her a child expert) she did not have any children and -- like her colleagues -- did not want any. She said a lot of people should have done something else instead of having children.
"I wonder if that $34.06 includes the public sector pension plans?"
It does not include the hourly monetary value of the pensions, and usually generous post-retirment health insurance benefits oftentimes provided to retiree and dependents for LIFE. Benefit packages do vary, but the teachers unions will ALWAYS want to focus only on pay, not on the huge benefits (generally not received in the private sector), tenure system which carefully guards against accountability and results, and automatic pay raises.
Here we go again, bash the teachers. Read through this same basic tripe yesterday. Didn't read far today, just enough to see the same tripe spouted about teachers by those who don't know the whole story or don't want to listen to those who know what they're talking about when it comes to the work teachers do.
Yeah, that's all I do. "Yes Jimmy, I just used my answer key to grade your two-page essay. Heck, I used that answer key to grade all 150 of your essays." /s
I am an English teacher, and I have to regularly grade subjective material like essays and short answer tests for over 150 students. There is no answer key for grading essays. Don't make such knee-jerk, generalized statements about the teaching profession.
Now, my students sometimes co-operate by just not handing it in, but that's another story.
How the English teachers grade all those essays, I'll never understand.
"Educators sometimes object that hourly earnings calculations do not capture the additional hours they work outside of school, but this objection is not very compelling. First, the National Compensation Survey is designed to capture all hours actually worked. And teachers are hardly the only wage earners who take work home with them."
I think this varies tremendously among states.
In Texas, teacher pay is notoriously low. If you live on Long Island, average salary in my old district was $85K about five years ago. Teachers got health insurance benefits after retirement for life (spousal coverage included) and gold plated defined benefit pension plans.
No one I know in the private sector gets any of this, and job security does not compare either.
IMO, as a taxpayer and someone who knows some good high school teachers, I would be willing to offer significantly higher salaries in exchange for scrapping the tenure system, and shifting to a defined contribution pension plan.
I knew two high school teachers that taught on Long Island. They both made about $100K per year, had awesome benefits, and huge time off.
They had a ski condo in Vermont, and would also summer there. Private sector employees that I knew with more advanced degrees earned about that or a little more, but did not have awesome pensions, summers and a few other selected weeks off every year, and worked far longer hours with little or no job security.
"He gets treated like dirty by the students, yelled at by the parents, and takes an incredible amount of crap from the administration. He doesn't make nearly as much as he should."
Then, how much should a soldier in Iraq make? How about a private sector employee with an abusive boss and no labour union to protect him/her?
Granted, teaching is not an easy job. But it is taxpayer funded, there is tenure, and there are summers off and excellent benefits. 50-60 hours per week is average for private sector, and not everyone is a CEO.
This is the exception rather than the rule. Some Districts do pay this much for teachers who have lots of years of service usually around 20 to 25 years.A member of my family is a first year teacher and the salary is $42,000. Not out line by any means and this is the more common salary level.
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