no teachers show up for "back to school night"

As I said , when a union gets involved, it's all about money.

The direction of this discussion bears that out. It's all about money as well.

 

48 days a year (gotta have 4 weeks vacation ya know) and done by noon on your work day. That's the life!

And if I'm gonna work Sunday and Wednesday nights they best be passing the plate twice.

 

I have a friend who is a dentist in town and his sister and her husband or teachers. His sister has said she makes more per hour than her brother, counting health and welfare benefits, and he agrees.

The problem I see with many teachers is they want work hours like labor and be looked at like professionals or management. Labor believes you pay for 40 hours 52 weeks a year and that is what you get, any more you have to pay. Professionals work on contract and most of them which I know put in 70 hours or more a week.

 

Pulling out individual examples when I am talking in general does not negate my point.

 

Your point is that you believe that teachers are under paid.

The problem is that you haven't demonstrated it yet.

You said that the average teacher salary is 45K.

Compare that with a professional working 12 months a year - as opposed to 9 and that is the equivalent of 60k.

On top of that teachers retirement is a defined benefit of 30 to 50% of their last year's salary.

Very few others have such a retirement plan.

 

Sounds like one of the schools around here. The police officers are kept very busy.
I busted a student going through my bag the other day and on my way to report it to the office, another student came to me letting me know her wallet had been stolen. The last incident before that was a student flinging a pair of heavy scissors across the room trying to hit another student, about chopped the pony tail off an innocent girl not involved in the process.

Ducking flying objects, spending your own paycheck money on school supplies and lesson supplements, risking your health and safety...

Fun fun fun.

 

Take a teacher making lets say 45,000 and with health and welfare into account, they would be making a lot more. Keep in mind that I've been self employed or a pastor( bi-vocational all but a few years) in my life.

Our town is loaded with retired school teachers from around the country. Many are upset that they aren't getting but 4 or 5 thousand or more a month and health insurance in most cases, add that to their pay. I think they do well or maybe I should say the ones in my family have done well in the past and are doing well today. I can only go on what teachers tell me and the budget of school boards from state to state.

 

There are other drawbacks in the field of education...

My wife works with Special Ed students. She gets "hazardous duty pay".

More than once she has had to have medical treatment for bites, kicks, punches, gouges, etc.

One time a broken finger, another a bite that broke the skin.

But at least these children are not totally reponsible for their actions.
Not a job that I could handle.

HankD

 

Glad your wife has the job, they are needed.

Down here teachers get put on their rear from time to time. Back in the 60' and 70's the union pushed for kids not to be punished by teachers. I think they won. Now with everyone willing to go to court for looking at Johnny wrong after he puts the teacher on their rear, it is a different world. But down here we have more teachers than we would like to talk about having relationship with students, you know lovers, male with male, male with female, female with female, female with male, teachers selling drugs to students, it isn't a good picture. I though that was just in college, or that is all I ever heard about of it with my older two for the most part.

 

Yes here in WA State we are no stranger to that sort of thing : e.g. Mary Kay Letourneau.

HankD

 

Since demonstrating it would technically require that I compare teachers with all comparable jobs, I leave the looking at the particular data to you. Here are some examples based on average starting salary (data is from Payscale.com):
K-12 teacher: ~34k (adjusted for weeks worked comes out to be ~40-42k)
Mechanical engineer: ~53k
Systems engineer: ~50k
Operations manager: ~43k
Registered nurse: ~46k

First of all, most teachers work closer to 10 (typically out in early to mid June and go back early to mid August) months. School days are usually around 185, but thats just the days kids have to be there. For instance, I typically could't pack it away for the school year till the second week in June and was back getting ready for the next year in 2nd week of August.

Also, most teachers also spend around 2 weeks (at least) during the summer doing things work related - planning, professional reading and study. And that doesn't even touch on the time (and cost) for continuing education classes that are required for most certifications (from what I can tell, it averages out to about 2 weeks worth of work a year). Then also take into account that most professionals get 2-3 paid weeks of vacation a year. That brings the actual difference in time worked down to only 3-6 weeks less worked a year by teachers.

Here I grant your point, retirement benefits do tend to run on the upper average to higher end for teachers. However, this is only good if one survives in teaching for 20-30 years. A large number (one report indicates as high as half) of teachers however quit teachings within the first 5 years. Thus, for the average teacher, the retirement benefits are of little value.

Additionally, in most states, the retirement plan is in lieu of social security whereas in other professions retirement is on top of social security. Sure, it still a good deal for those who survive to retirement, but its not quite as grand as it at first seems.

 

Spoken like someone who's never taught.

We work way more than that. And if they didn't give us some time off, there wouldn't be any teachers. It's one of the hardest possible jobs. Very fulfilling, but very difficult.

 

I won't dispute many teachers are like that. It doesn't represent the field a whole though.

Additionally, in most professional jobs one of the reasons there are so many hours put into the job is because there is hope of advancement, or at least substantial recognition - getting a better position, moving up the ladder, earning a reward or bonus. With teaching, such hopes are minimal or non-existent.

 

And this is why people believe that teachers are under paid. The high turn over early in the career skews the average salary figure down.

Teachers receive annual pay increases which are higher than increases in other professions.

I think it is a good system. The lower starting figure helps to ensure that people are going into the profession that have a heart for teaching and not just looking for a big paycheck.

The higher salaries in the farther out years and the good retirement benefits make up for the early years.

 

Well it can't be too hard - and the pay can't be too low - and the hours can't be too long - because there is no real teacher shortage - except in inner city schools where the issues aren't about pay.

 

If there is no teacher shortage, then why are the requirements to teach, particularly in areas like math and science, becomes liberalized so drastically and so across the board?

 

It is the overall pattern across the nation. If there is a state that hasn't liberalized their teacher certification requirements by some means and to some extent, I have yet to discover it. Check out www.teach-now.org for the relevant stats.

Your state Alabama is actually has actually provided 3 different alternatives to the old way of gaining teacher certification. No longer is a degree in education an absolute must to gaining full certification. Even states where the teacher union held great power have stopped fighting such legislation - they don't like losing control in this way, but the teacher shortage forced their hand. I have kept a close eye on this sort of things for the past 15 years because it is how I became a teacher without a degree in education. Your states alternate routes are actually a bit more liberal than the one I had to go through...although even that one became more and more liberal as I progressed through it.

 

I have done enough research to believe that my statement holds true as a general rule. You are welcome to state all the exceptions you can find.

No disagreement there. However
1. Don't forget that as society declines, teacher have to work harder to accomplish the same task - both to take up the slack of teachers who are part of the decline, to deal with the parents and kids who represent that decline even more emphatically, to deal with the bureaucracy which is feeding off of this decline.
2. That some may not be satisfied does not mean they aren't underpaid. That some may be satisfied with pay at one point doesn't mean that things may change which gives them a legitimate reason to become unsatisfied. Ain't saying its one way or the other in the case of this story (can't know w/o, at the very least, hearing the teacher's side), merely that the its all too possible that there is more going on than is apparent.