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What a Crime!!! Teachers should get paid more money!!!!

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The heavy hours designing course work and teaching plans are spent in the first few years. Once you have a solid base, it doesn't take much to update for each year. All professionals work long hours when they start. Accountants (CPA's) make between $27K and $50K as a starting salary depending on what size firm they go to and where in the country. They will work 12 hour days at least 6 days a week and need to study and prepare to take the CPA exam. Their hourly pay is much less than a teacher and they have zero job guarantees (compared to teachers who are almost impossible to fire, especially after they get tenure).

If you did a comparison to the other professions, you'll see that it is only later in your career that the other professions start significantally out performing teachers in pay. I don't know of anyone who became a teacher with the expectation of becoming rich, so I think that is well expected and built in to the salary.

I could also argue that the courses a teacher needs to pass and the certification requirements are much easier than other professions. There is a link between that and the pay they receive. Basically, it keeps the supply of teachers fairly high.

Michael
 
That's funny and true. Many people go to education because they can't get a job. A good friend of mine just did an IT degree and a bunch of people from his class can't get work and are probably going to get their education degrees.

Anybody with a Bachelor's Degree can start teaching in California in a lot of Districts. Just get an Emergency Credential and show you are working on your real Credential.
 
I think MOST teachers are OVERPAID. Out of all the teachers I've had from elementary school through th first two years of college, I can only think of four teachers that were really good. A lot of teachers were average, and din't really stand out at all in any way, and a lot of teachers were downright terrible. They should have been fired, but they're all union and it's basically impossible to get rid of them, no matter how bad they are at teaching.

I had an AP statistics teacher in high school. First thing we did on the first day of class was COUNT M&Ms!! I was a senior in high school taknig an AP course and I was COUNTING CANDY!

I had a fourth grade teacher who spent half the day every day showing stupid school movies on the damn reel to reel projector.

I had a college professor for english 1A who only made us read one book the entire semester. I didn't read it, skipped the midterm, and got a B in the class!

Most teachers suck.


However, these teachers deserve special congratulations, as they were truly exceptional:

Ms. Ikeda, Calabasas Elementary School, Watsonville CA
Mrs. Fabrin (I hope I spelled that right), Monte Vista Christian School, Watsonville CA
Randy Smith, Aptos High School, Aptos CA
Lonnie Heinke, Cabrillo Community College, Aptos CA
 


<< $45,000-60,000 a year >>



Wow, that's good money. I don't know what the hell teachers especially their unions are bitching about ? Plenty of people get by on much less.
 
Skoorb says supply and demand, and I agree. The supply of money for teachers in many districts is too small, so qualified teachers go onto other professions. I know several teachers, and it really hard to make a living at this job. Take TX for example. More teachers here are underqualified/not certified/have no degree than ones that do. That lowers quality of education, which affects all students in public schools. Since that is where most of our workforce comes from, I can see where poeple are concerned. I don't think we should mandate teachers salaries be artificially high (especially since they get most of the summer off), but I do think we should make decisions that increases the level of competence of our teachers. We need all of them certified and degreed, and that is probably going to take more $$ precisely because of Supply and Demand.



<< Basically, it keeps the supply of teachers fairly high.
 >>



Quantity vs. quality. That affects how well our students are taught. High teacher rollover hurts students as newer and less experienced teachers flood the schools. Rarely do you have teachers that stay at a school more than 5-6 years. They usually move on to other professions, right when they have just gotten good at their profession. We need to try and keep these people employed to teach the young. That is the ideal situation, and I know we are a free market economy. But you cannot deny that teachers are a very important profession because they teach the kids that will go on to every single other profession. If the kids as a whole are not as educated coming out, then that will affect the country across the board.

Sorry for being longwinded, bad habit.
 


<<

<< You need to have a family member who is a teacher to understand all that they do. They work far more than 6 hours a day. Most are required to develop coursework and curriculum, and then you have parent teacher meetings, etc. >>



My wife teaches German in high school. Their school hours are from 7 am to 1 pm. That is 6 hours. Now remember that many teachers don't teach every single class period (except elementary school teachers). That reduces her workday to 5 hours of class. I'll add an hour for other tasks: net 6 hours. I see the vast majority of teachers using the same coursework and curriculum year after year. Thus they don't spend any time creating new ones. The vast majority of teachers I've had in school or personally know either don't grade homework or have the kids grade them in class. Thus they don't spend extra time with that either. Parent teacher meetings are twice a year (two days a piece) so I'll up that to 184 work days. There are a few extra days that are also required - I'll round up to 190 workdays. Still that is far from the 250 workdays for the rest of us. >>




Well, Im speaking as someone who's mother is a first grade teacher, so she teaches every period. And 7AM to 1PM? My HS was 7:45-3PM.

Besides that, I'd love to have teachers who let me grade my own work! 😀 Where do you live!? 🙂

Point is, and my mother may be an exception, but there is much,much more work than you see. Interaction with parents is often much more than 2x/year. Developing curriculum (which is my experience my my mother and teachers who worked with her is quite common) take a lot of time.

Just MO. 🙂
 
<whine> the job i chose doesn't pay enough </whine>

You're planning on teaching kids, and haven't even learned the lesson that most kids know by age 4 or so, that life ain't fair? For you to say that you think you're worth $60k a year, IMHO, means you are either naive or have a very skewed idea of the value of money, and in either event, doesn't speak well for your desire to be a public servant.

And for you to say that teachers deserve more money across the board is ludricrous. A good number of teachers deserve nothing better than to be fired, much less be getting paid $60k. It's "teachers" like you, with the encouragement of your unions, are to a great degree the cause of education in this country (especially in areas like Philadelphia) to be of lesser quality than that found in a typical third world nation. :|
 
Only way teachers salaries will rise is if we pay for them. Want to hear a story about my school? The teachers in the Mt. Diablo Unified District (suburb in bay area) have a limit for english and history teachers that say their classrooms cannot have more then 35 students in any class. Beginning of this year, my english and history class both have over 40. The teachers keep complaining to the administration, the administration keeps complainign to the district office, and nothing happens. About 1 week before the first quarter ends, I get called up to the vice principals office. He tells me he had to redo my ENTIRE schedule, i ended up with about 3 completely new teachers out of my original 6 classes. So lets see, we're 10 weeks into the school year and now I get to start all over! Hurray!

You know why it took them so long to transfer students? The district thought our school was "padding" our numbers, ie to get more money because everytime a student shows up for class the school gets x dollars from california. They didn't believe we actually had more then 35 students in some of our classes, and thus wouldn't give us the new sections to hire new teachers and pay some more if they volunteered to give up their free period to teach another class. So this went on for awhile, finally the district sent someone over to take roll in EVERY SINGLE CLASS to see if we had more then 35 students in each class. Not only that, but they did this on Yon Kippur (sp?), the Jewish holiday. So obviously we're going to be missing some students because we have a nice bunch of Jewish students at our school.

Anyways, public schools suck, teachers deserve to get paid more if that means they will actually become good teachers. If your a teacher and u know nothing about your subject I think you deserve even less then the 30k you start out with (and yes, california does have a shortage of teachers so they basically hire anyone that applies for the job).
 


<< Most arent worth what they get now (Ill minor in Education in case I cant get a real job

That's funny and true. Many people go to education because they can't get a job. A good friend of mine just did an IT degree and a bunch of people from his class can't get work and are probably going to get their education degrees. >>



There's that old saying:
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
🙂
 


<< There's that old saying:
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. >>



Then there are those that can do both 😉



<< You're planning on teaching kids, and haven't even learned the lesson that most kids know by age 4 or so, that life ain't fair? For you to say that you think you're worth $60k a year, IMHO, means you are either naive or have a very skewed idea of the value of money, and in either event, doesn't speak well for your desire to be a public servant.

And for you to say that teachers deserve more money across the board is ludricrous. A good number of teachers deserve nothing better than to be fired, much less be getting paid $60k. It's "teachers" like you, with the encouragement of your unions, are to a great degree the cause of education in this country (especially in areas like Philadelphia) to be of lesser quality than that found in a typical third world nation.
>>



So you are saying teachers should take less money because they serve the public? They should just expect it to be that way "because that is the way it is". With that reasoning, we should never change anything. That is the way it is so get over it! Hehehe. Hey, if we could pay the better teachers, the ones that could not teach would be fired. Then quality of education would rise. But you want to pay same or less and expect better quality. Sounds like skewed reasoning to me.
 


<< Well, Im speaking as someone who's mother is a first grade teacher, so she teaches every period. And 7AM to 1PM? My HS was 7:45-3PM. >>


They eliminate the lunch hour that way. Your HS day was 7 hours and 15 minutes long. I bet at least 30 minutes of that was lunchtime. Thus we are talking about the same amount of class time.



<< Besides that, I'd love to have teachers who let me grade my own work! 😀 Where do you live!? 🙂 >>

We rarely graded our own papers. We always passed our paper to the person ahead/behind/right/left and then graded our peers in class. I thought this was a terrible waste of class time, but that is the way it is. We live in Nebraska.



<< Developing curriculum (which is my experience my my mother and teachers who worked with her is quite common) take a lot of time. >>

Great teachers take lots of time with this. It was said earlier on this thread: most teachers spend lots of time their first year or two developing their curriculum. Then they reuse the old stuff for the rest of their career.
 
Glenn 1-

Well said.

<<Most teachers suck.


However, these teachers deserve special congratulations, as they were truly exceptional:>>


As I said before, too bad the ones who truely deserve rcognition (and increased pay) are lumped in with the time putting in, hanger ons. Isnt that truely the way of life and the Democratic party?
 


<< Because teachers are underpaid, the state of NJ and many other states are having a hard time filling classrooms with adequate and professional instructors!! >>



And did you ever stop to think that the reason for having a hard time filling classrooms with "adequate and professional" people, is because adequate and professional people want to work with other high-achieving, adequate and professional people like themselves, rather than the lazy, clock-watching, civil servant, only do enough to get by, unionized civil service schmucks who make up the bulk of teachers in this country ?

When teachers start policing their own, and making sure that the other crappy teachers get fired, rather than playing the union solidarity game which makes it impossible to fire a bad worker, then i'll listen to you bitch about your paychecks. Until then, you don't deserve the respect or pay of a professional, you're just another union working class lemming.
 
I agree we need to get Lazy teachers out of the public school systems!!! I will never become a lazy teacher, you can count on that!! I had teachers that didn't give a damn about me or how I was doing in there classroom. Hell, when I graduated from High school I couldn't even put a paragraph together. I couldn't do basic algebra. It was all foreign to me. Thank god for those general ed. college courses that I took in community college 🙂
 
I think a teacher can be lazy and still be a great teacher. Maybe a teacher that's lazy doesn't give a lot of classwork because he/she doesn't want to grade it. I had one of those in 9th grade, but hell I learned so much about english and the english language/grammar that year. I think the ones we need to fire are the stupid ones. It's a well known fact there's a shortage of teachers' in the country right now, and with reproduction constantly on the rise, well those things dont go well together. Judging by the quality of some of the teachers at my school, i'm happy knowing that if I ever need a decent job paying 30k at start I can just apply at my school because they sure as hell don't require anything to get the job here.
 
People should teach because they love teaching and want to make a difference in children's lives...not because it's a high paying job.
As many others have said, I see nothing wrong with $40-60k, that's a lot of money. And they're doing a job that isn't really necessary.
What do I mean by that? Well, look at me. I went to school from grades K through 5. After that I was homeschooled. My SAT scores were pretty good, and I was accepted to most of the colleges I applied to. I'm a first semester senior (majoring in CS) with a ~3.8 GPA, and I'm working full time as a software engineer while I go to college.
No school for me and I'm doing great. Maybe I'm the exception to the rule, maybe not. Either way, I obviously didn't need to go to school, and yet my parents still paid taxes to support the public schools and pay those wages.

From what I've seen in public schools, most teachers are not very dedicated to their jobs, nor do they really care about the kids. Giving them more money will not change this. I know a few people who are teachers because they want to make a difference, and because of that they truly are great teachers. It's a shame that there aren't more teachers like them...if there were, maybe I'd agree that teachers should make more money.
 
I went out with a girl that was a education major for like 5 years and I saw all kinds of crap from her classes and friends in the business it was a joke. I will admit that I have had a few good teachers, and some half decent but many very crappy ones. I was in a class once that was mostly filled with Ed majors and they were all arguing with me one day how they should lower the number of years until you get tenure.

I was under the impression that it took a very long time until you were granted this, I was informed it was 3 years and they were trying to get it lower. Some of the arguements I heard were.... well it takes us a long time to become good teachers what if we keep screwing up in the first 5 years shouldn't we be protected?? So why is it that almost any other industry that if you suck for extended periods of time you get canned? How about you work for a large company like IBM for 20 years and one day they just decide to boot you for someone younger and cheaper? Not as a teacher you are totally protected.

As for the pay we have such a glut of teachers in my area, eastern PA that they would jump at 35K to start in a heartbeat, most of the ones that I know that graduated are still waiting tables or working other odd jobs, but the idea of paying the idiots that I saw that couldn't put a single lesson plan together without copying off the other students to get $60K+ year for a shortened day and work year is sickening.

I found out the other day also from a guy that I train with that teaches science, he retires next year after 32 years or something, he gets his health insurance for him and his family covered for the rest of his life, is that normal?? I mean how much can that be causing the tax payers every year? He gets a huge pension, already making about $70K and those benefits, no wonder they never want to leave a school district.
 
"And did you ever stop to think that the reason for having a hard time filling classrooms with "adequate and professional" people, is because adequate and professional people want to work with other high-achieving, adequate and professional people like themselves, rather than the lazy, clock-watching, civil servant, only do enough to get by, unionized civil service schmucks who make up the bulk of teachers in this country ?

When teachers start policing their own, and making sure that the other crappy teachers get fired, rather than playing the union solidarity game which makes it impossible to fire a bad worker, then i'll listen to you bitch about your paychecks. Until then, you don't deserve the respect or pay of a professional, you're just another union working class lemming."

I will definitely agree that the Union is actually doing more harm than good. We just had a incident just over a month ago in middletown, NJ. What had happened was the Teacher's Union and the school board did not finalize there contract before the start of the school year. So when it came time to finalize the teacher's contract, the NJEA (teacher's union) objected because they didn't like the fact that teacher's had to pay there benefits on a sliding scale. It went something like this:

18,000-24,000 (didn't have to pay for benefits)
24,000-32,000 ($50 yearly)
32,000-40,000 ($75 yearly)
40,000-50,000 (125 yearly)
50,000-59,000 (175 yearly)
60,000 plus (200 yearly) - figures not exact, but you get the picture

A stinken $200 a year benefits. How pathetic..

So when the teachers went on strike the city's judge orderd the teachers back to work or else risk jail time. The NJEA was there in the city's courtroom and they were all shouting slogans and so forth...

We'll the teachers ignored the Judge's orders and you know what? He started to throw them in jail!!!! He started at the letter A and worked his way up. So if your last name stared with a B, then you got thrown in jail first. We'll this when't on for 3 days (the judge got to the letter H) and the NJEA and the teacher's gave up there fight but they still havenot signed a new contract.

Pretty big news in NJ

:Q:Q:Q:Q:Q



 


<<
From what I've seen in public schools, most teachers are not very dedicated to their jobs, nor do they really care about the kids. Giving them more money will not change this. I know a few people who are teachers because they want to make a difference, and because of that they truly are great teachers. It's a shame that there aren't more teachers like them...if there were, maybe I'd agree that teachers should make more money. >>



Ugh, unfortunately true, what I saw from all these ed majors in school wasn't them looking to change kids and influence lives but saying... but dan where else can I get all my summers off to go to the beach??

Yeah that is someone I really want to teach the kids of america.
 
Are teachers paid enough for the WORK they do....most likely....

Are teachers paid enough for the CRAP they have to put up with while baby sitting and attempting to teach whiny brats and dealing with parents that couldn't care less...probably not.


My sister is a elementary teacher and the stories she tells.... I still ask her why she wanted to be a teacher.


I couldn't do it....You'd see me on TV.... "Teacher goes postal at parent conferences..." 😉

- TK
 
"As for the pay we have such a glut of teachers in my area, eastern PA that they would jump at 35K to start in a heartbeat, most of the ones that I know that graduated are still waiting tables or working other odd jobs, but the idea of paying the idiots that I saw that couldn't put a single lesson plan together without copying off the other students to get $60K+ year for a shortened day and work year is sickening."

We'll I'm in NJ and we have such a teachers shortage, especially in:

Special Education
language (If you can speak and write spanish than you are like gold)
Math
Spanish

I'm not worried when I go job hunting. Because I'm a male and in special education I should have no problems in attaining a full time position. The special education field is predominately female. Schools are desperately trying to attract males as we are soorly needed. I can pick up my local newspaper and there are a ton of positions open for teacher of the handicapped.

When I took my Special education class this fall, there were only two males in a classromm that consisted of 25 students. And I was one of them 🙂🙂🙂😉

 


<<

We'll I'm in NJ and we have such a teachers shortage, especially in:

Special Education
language (If you can speak and write spanish than you are like gold)
Math
Spanish

I'm not worried when I go job hunting. Because I'm a male and in special education I should have no problems in attaining a full time position. The special education field is predominately female. Schools are desperately trying to attract males as we are soorly needed. I can pick up my local newspaper and there are a ton of positions open for teacher of the handicapped.

When I took my Special education class this fall, there were only two males in a classromm that consisted of 25 students. And I was one of them 🙂🙂🙂😉 >>




Well good luck then, if you are specialized enough you are generally in a good position, these were all girls, in early childhood ed, looking for good private schools, I'm wondering how many of them lowered their expectations by now.
 
I think that teaching high school math is one of the easiest jobs in the world. All math courses have a set guideline, where on this day you cover this chapter and do this assignment, and keep going. There's no room for creativity or taking extra days to expand on a subject, and you can't have a conversation about math! Yes, it's one of the most important subjects, and I used to love it back in 6th-8th grades when I was a genius at it. Now we're talking about parabolas and all those circle algebra crap that no one really needs to know unless their job requires that knowledge. Kind of like some of the science classes schools offer today.
 
60,000 isn't a lot of money in NJ. With it's taxes. The average teacher does not get nearly that much money. Look at how much a teacher gets in Kentucky. I bet it's half that.
 
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