Are teachers overpaid?!

[Zaia]

"Are Teachers Overpaid? by Tamim Ansary

Some people think teachers are overpaid--I get e-mail about it all the time. Other people think teachers are underpaid. I get a lot of that e-mail too.

I was going to weigh in with my own opinion when I realized I couldn't, because I didn't know how much teachers make--or how much anyone else makes, for that matter, except for a few well-known CEOs and sports stars.

I said to myself, "Get some facts before shooting your mouth off, Tamim." (I learned that from a teacher.)

Lucky for me, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) researches salary issues. I found their Web site, and here's what they report:

The average American public school teacher, kindergarten through high school, makes $43,250.

Salaries vary from state to state, with South Dakota coming in last at $30,265 a year, and Connecticut leading the way at $53,507.

Is $43,000 a lot, or a little? I couldn't tell, so I dug up salary averages for ten other professions. Here's how they stack up:

Profession Average (annual salary)
Teacher: $43,000
Assistant professor: $45,000
Police officer: $46,000
Accountant: $53,000
Department store buyer: $58,000
Architect: $60,000
Computer systems analyst: $71,000
Engineer: $75,000
Attorney: $83,000
Full professor: $84,000
Doctor: $120,000


I can hear some of you out there saying, "Sure, teachers make less than doctors, big deal. Isn't that fair?" Underpaid, overpaid, it only means something in comparison to how much a person should be paid, right?

But that's a big can of worms. How much "should" anyone be paid? And how do we judge "should"?

What teachers deserve

Is any line of work entitled to a particular level of compensation? On what basis? Are there objective criteria?

I can think of three:

The amount of training needed for the job
The all-around difficulty of the work
The value of the product or service to society

If you use these criteria, doctors deserve tons of money. Their job requires endless schooling followed by a brutal internship … and they save lives. What could be more important than that?

Carpet installers, by contrast, don't necessarily need a college degree, although they do need training and practical experience. If they're good at what they do, their carpets look smooth and stay put--an important and necessary skill, but it's not saving lives. No wonder doctors make more.

I think teachers are more like doctors when it comes to the amount of training needed for the job. Teachers need four years of college and at least one more for a teaching certificate, or two more for a master's degree. Even then, in many states, teachers have to keep taking summer courses to hold onto their jobs. The requirements vary, but in California, for example, teachers are required to clock 150 hours of course work over five years--which they take in the summer, usually, and must pay for themselves.

In fact, teachers need about the same amount of training as architects, engineers, and accountants.

Hard work or hardly working?

I think a lot of the "overpaid teachers" talk comes from the notion that teachers' hours match up with students' hours: Put in six hours a day, head home around 2 PM, and take summers off. Compared to most jobs, that's scarcely working, right?

Hello--news flash! Classroom time is only the tip of the pencil for a teacher. No one just walks into a roomful of kids without a plan and keeps them fruitfully occupied for six hours at a stretch, day after day. Lesson plans have to be drawn up. There go your weekends.

Then there's homework. If you have 25 kids in your class, and each one turns in one page of homework a day, you have 25 pages to read and mark before tomorrow. There go your evenings.

Furthermore, you have meetings to attend--with other teachers, curriculum experts, administrators, and parents. Plus, when kids bring their life problems into the classroom--and they're human, so they do--who ends up dealing with them? That's right, the teacher. It's not in the job description, but a teacher's obligations inevitably overlap with those of social workers, therapists, and even parents.

In his book Small Victories, journalist Samuel Freedman followed New York City high school teacher Jessica Siegel around for a year to see what she actually did, and he found that this teacher put in more than 60 hours per week at her job. It's anecdotal evidence, and maybe Siegal is unusual. But every teacher I talked to felt his or her work week extended way past 40 hours. Indeed, a national survey conducted by the Department of Education showed that teachers spend an average of 45 hours a week doing their jobs.

Saving civilization

Which brings us to our third criterion. How valuable is the contribution teachers make to humanity?

Never mind Mr. Holland's Opus. Forget individual cases. Let's consider the teaching profession as a whole. If doctors save lives, what do teachers do?

Well, let's see. Everything we call civilization has to be passed on to the next generation. Isn't that what teachers do? Reading, writing, adding 26 plus 13, calculating the boiling point of water and naming the vitamins found in carrots, explaining the difference between Turkey and turkey--none of this stuff is in the genes.

Without teachers, civilization would have to be developed from scratch every generation, and man, you can't get too far in one generation. We'd still be listening to eight-track tapes. We wouldn't even have cars! Well, I guess we'd have our parents' cars, but we wouldn't know how to drive them!

So yeah, I guess teaching is important work. On a scale from one to ten, let's give it a nine. (Saving lives has still got to rank higher.)

One ballplayer equals 100 teachers? According to the latest edition of Jobs Rated Almanac, the highest-paid professionals in America are NBA basketball players. They average $4,637,825 a year.

In other words, an NBA player makes about 100 times as much as a teacher.

If service to humanity counts, why should ballplayers make millions while teachers scrape by on a few measly tens of thousands? What do basketball players contribute that's more important than transferring the contents of civilization to the next generation?

Good question, but only because it illustrates an important truth about the compensation for any job. Clint Eastwood said it best in his movie Unforgiven: "Deserve's got nothing to do with it."

Why teachers make less than lawyers

The amount of clout is what it's all about.

In America, teachers started out in a hole dating back to the 19th century. Back then, most schoolteachers were women, and women who worked professionally outside the home were mostly teachers (or nurses) because other careers were closed to them.

Those women were offered low wages on the assumption that they were not breadwinners supporting families. In fact, single teachers were generally assumed to be clocking time while they waited to get married. Those who kept working after marriage were thought to be making "extra income," which justified paying them what amounted to pin money.

Since their options were limited, they had to accept what they were offered. Thus, the prevailing wage for teachers started out low.

Meet and submit

In 1948, when the AFT ran its first salary survey, teachers were making less than $3,000 a year--which is equivalent to maybe $16,000 today.

Unlike plumbers, bus drivers, and truckers, teachers had no right to engage in collective bargaining. Instead, they went through a process called "meet and converse," which meant they would meet with their school board and discuss what they needed. Then they would go away, and the school board would decide what to give them.

But in 1961, a math teacher named Albert Shanker kick-started massive changes in educator compensation. As head of a professional association called the United Federation of Teachers, he called a controversial teachers' strike in New York City.

The rise of clout

That strike gave birth to one of America's major trade union movements. Over the next 15 years, teachers won the right to collective bargaining state by state. As unions took over salary negotiations, teachers' incomes began to rise rapidly.

Today, 80 percent of teachers belong to one of two large unions, the National Educational Association and the American Federation of Teachers, or their local affiliates. If the two unions were to merge, as has been discussed, they would form the largest trade union in America.

Today, teachers' unions swing a heavy stick in national politics. They rank near the top in political contributions, mostly to Democratic candidates. Clout is no longer the problem for teachers--as a group, they've got it.

According to Judy Thomas, Director of Research for the California Teachers Association, teachers go on strike only as a last resort, in part because strikes are traumatic and tend to divide a faculty for years.

Slicing the pie

But the last resort has been reached frequently. The nation has seen hundreds of teacher strikes in the last 25 years. School boards, the opposing party in a teacher strike, don't necessarily believe teachers are overpaid. They believe schools are underfunded. The size of the pie is out of their hands, though: They can only divide up what they have.

About half the budget of a typical school district now goes to teachers. Other employees get 30 to 35 percent. They include administrators, but also janitors, secretaries, cafeteria workers, school nurses, teachers aides, and so on. Well, schools can't run without those folks either. If teachers get more, the others must get less. Or else the money must come out of the budget for books, supplies, maintenance, lights, and water.

A bigger pie

The other alternative would be for schools to get more money.

But where would that come from? Taxes, mostly. Other sources of public school funding are negligible--always have been, always will be.

In California, about 7 percent of the budget comes from renting out school property and the like. An even smaller amount comes from the state lottery, an increasingly common funding device that was pioneered in California. Today, the lottery provides 2 percent of school costs in California. But it isn't the answer. The bulk of the money for schools--91 percent, in fact--comes from state, local, and federal taxes.

If teachers are to get more money, citizens must pay more taxes. That's the bottom line. And a powerful current in American political life has been a demand for lower taxes.

If you start with the premise "taxes are too high," the conclusion "teachers are overpaid" is virtually automatic. The arguments about why they're overpaid come after the fact. "You can't fix the schools by throwing money at them," and its ilk are simply necessary fillers to bolster the premise that taxes must be lowered.

But it's wishful thinking to suppose that we can have good schools without paying teachers good salaries. Comparisons to the good old days ignore the fact that times have changed. Back then, low wages could secure top talent because half the population was restricted to just two or three jobs, one of which was teaching. The best still had to compete to be teachers, and only the best of the best got in. Today, potential teachers--men or women--have so many other options that it's the teaching profession that must compete, against other lines of work, to reel in the top talents. Otherwise, instead of teaching, those top talents might choose to be …

Well, let's see: police officers, accountants, department store buyers, architects, computer systems analysts, engineers, attorneys, professors, or doctors, for example.

Check page one to see what that comes out to in dollars."







http://encarta.msn.com/column/teacherpaymain.asp



Thoughts?

[Kelly Antilles]

Amen! Preach on.

[Zaia]

Amen! Preach on.

I thought it'd lead to some interesting discussion, considering Falk's Music & Arts thread (I wonder how that vote turned out, btw...hmmm)....

[Stravo]

I happen to think lawyers are underpaid. Average 45 hour work week....I've had 100 hour work weeks. It's all relative. Sure you look at someone with a 80,000 paycheck and go, boy he's overpaid....then you do the math and figure out that the amount of time you're in the office compared to being at home avergaes out to some attorneys making minimum wage.

I think its not easy playing the comparison game with paychecks and people's careers. Teachers can have a social life and raise fmailies. Alot of attorneys lives ARE the office and as for rasing a family...thats what the wives are for while we slave away. Thats no kind of life and the main reason why 50% of law grads are not practicing law 5 years after graduating. I hope to soon join that statistic.

Mind you I am not saying that tecahers don't deserve to make more money, but if we''re going to play that game, we could all use more money.

[Knife]

I am assuming the salaries are based off of public schools, and I would be interested in what the private sector pays for a comparison. All and all though, I am for teachers making substansially more cash in their respective marketplace. Obviously teachers in hickville MS won't get as high as pay as teachers in LA, but then again the cost of living is lower in someplaces as opposed to the 'big cities'.

The problem is that the entire system is broke and some (I count myself amoung them) don't want to spend more on a system, even if its to increase the teachers pay, when the entire system is corrupt and unworkable. As a hasty generization, I wouldn't mind paying the taxes it would requirer to pay teachers around 60 grand a year as a base pay. But the freaking kids better damn well know where Canada is on a map and know who won WWII.

[Zaia]

Right, but Strav, 45 hours isn't an accurate representation of a teacher's work week. Any given day, I get to school at a quarter to seven in the morning and am usually at school until nine or ten at night, with after school rehearsals. That doesn't include weekend activities like marching band competitions, pep band games, district band festivals, adjudications, recruitment tours, the spring musical, parades, school spirit functions like pep rallies, solo and ensemble festivals, winter and spring concerts, and graduation ceremonies, most of which are a non-voluntary part of my job.

At the high school level, I don't have time to have a family and do well at my job. I have some friends who, when they were ready to settle down, moved from teaching high school music to middle school or elementary school because there just isn't enough time.

So, I feel the pain of someone who's overworked in the law office, but there is a bit more monetary compensation for it.

And for the record, the 'summers off' thing isn't really accurate, since every teacher I know, myself included, has to get a second job during the summer to pay bills.

[Kelly Antilles]

Teachers these days have just become glorified babysitters who are supposed to teach the tests and that's it. It's really horrible how they are treated. That's the main reason I *haven't* gone back and gotten my teaching degree. You're treated like shit by not only the kids but the administration as well. You can't say anything to the kids to get them to calm down because then you'll be brought up on charges.

If parents would just start actually PARENTING their children, we wouldn't be in the problems we are today.

[Keevan_Colton]

Yeah....half my family give or take work in education....and I agree completely.

[David]

As a Texas resident and future teacher I must say that, at least in my area, teachers are paid less than anywhere else in the country. the average public school teacher here makes less than 30, 000 a years and private school teachers even less. But by God our football team has the best equipment of anywhere in the state!

[David]

BTW, I'm moving out of the Weat Texas area and maybe even the state as soon as I get my certification.

[Col. Crackpot]

My fiancee' is a teacher, and dammit, that is the sweetest deal in town. What the numbers here don't show is that teachers work 180 days a year in the united states. add on 3 days at the begining and end of the year and you'll get 186. She is home every day by 4, and corrects papers for an hour and a half. Every time they have professional development, it is scheduled on a normal school day! so they get a substitute. Teachers in her department (Pawtucket, Rhode Island) are allowed up to 90 SICK DAYS A A YEAR! she gets the best helath benefits money can buy with zero deductable and no employee contribution. she gets a pension based on peak salary (70% after 40 years or 35% after 20 years) All that, and RIGHT OUT OF COLLEGE she is making $38,000 a year. once she is tenured it goes up to 42,500 and after her masters it hits almost $48,000. i'm sorry, teachers around here are paid just enough thankyou very much. she gets so pissed when people threaten to walk out and strike over a few measly bucks here and there. Actually, the only people you will really find who feel so strongly about techers being underpaid are the Unions like the the AFT Zaia cited. The bloated beurocracy of the AFT depends on all of the money it extorts out of the taxpayers to sustain itself. In closing, let me just say that a am not ranting against teachers, but merely the utter greed that permiates the established teachers unions. maybe if the unions didn't demand such a big chunk of the bugetary pie, we could afford music and arts in the schools again.

[Knife]

Teachers these days have just become glorified babysitters who are supposed to teach the tests and that's it. It's really horrible how they are treated. That's the main reason I *haven't* gone back and gotten my teaching degree. You're treated like shit by not only the kids but the administration as well. You can't say anything to the kids to get them to calm down because then you'll be brought up on charges.

If parents would just start actually PARENTING their children, we wouldn't be in the problems we are today.

True, but that goes back to the school board for installing bullshit ciriculum like sensitivity training and zero tolerance policies that suck up valuable teaching time that could be used to teach kids math, reading and writting. Everyone is to blame, even the teachers themselves because they live in the comunity that established these things.

Last year I had to fight with the teacher to actually punish my kid when he fucked up. They didn't want to, they thought it would be bad to punish my kid if he fucked up. Well you know what, your the teacher, your in charge, if he fucks up, punish him or atleast call me and I'll set him straight.

[Kelly Antilles]

They aren't going to punish a child. They're too afraid they'll get sued. Sure, you may agree to it, but what about that other kid who goes home and tells his or her parents what happened and they are the fundie control freaks that will sue because a teacher laid a hand on a child?

[Stormbringer]

I think that teachers are underpaid. For all they do and the time a good teacher puts in I think they deserve more. They are a fundamental necessity and they aren't treated that way in general. Teachers are responsible for turning kids into educated adults and they aren't being paid in line with that. A salary in the neighborhood of a professor (who do the same kind of work) is fair.

[Kelly Antilles]

Okay, let's put it this way. GOOD teachers deserve to be paid more.

[neoolong]

I think the average might be skewed because it averages kindergarten to high school.

But I think that they seem to be underpaid from what I can tell.

[Kelly Antilles]

what's the difference between a teacher being paid in K or HS?

[RedImperator]

The American education system is one of the few, genuine, top-to-bottom irredemable clusterfucks you'll ever see this side of the Iraqi army. Here's my reasons why:

1. In a capitalist society, all professions must compete for skilled employees. Teaching is at an immediate disadvantage because it has to compete with everyone--teachers have to be experts or near-experts in areas that are in demand in other industries. With the exception of subjects like English literature, which has few non-academic applications, school districts are competing with private industry for good talent. In all professions, there are, broadly, two kinds of employees: those that work in it because they love it and can't imagine working anywhere else, and those who work in it because it pays better than any other job their education and talents could have gotten them. To pay competively with industry, teaching would require billions of additional dollars, and those dollars would have to come out of hugely increased taxes and/or the budgets of other local, state, and Federal programs. Not only will that never happen in the United States, it SHOULDN'T happen: high taxes have a demonstrably negative effect on the economy, and high property taxes (which is where most school funding comes from) ruins neighborhoods. It doesn't help that the teacher's unions have thrown their entire weight behind the Democrats. By doing so, they've made themselves politically irrevelant despite being politically loud: Republicans ignore teachers because they're going to vote Democrat anyway, and Democrats ignore teachers because teachers will never defect to the Republicans. The only time either party makes noise about education is during election years, where we get fiascos like the "No Child Left Behind Act", which usurps control from local and state school boards, expands the cult of the standardized test, and increases the size of the Federal education bureaucracy. The end result is that teaching can't pay enough to attract top talent. I've used this example before and I'll use it again here: most chemistry students aren't going to take a $40,000 teaching job when their education could get them a $100,000 job at DuPont, and the first politician who (rightly or wrongly) suggests teachers get paid $100,000 a year is going to be hanged.

More to come later...

[neoolong]

what's the difference between a teacher being paid in K or HS?

Isn't the pay different? I remember kindergarten was half day, wouldn't that make the pay less than that of a HS teacher? It would have been better if they had given averages according to year.

[Alyeska]

In Montana teachers earn less then $25,000. The people of the Montana legislator think they are earning to much and have been trying to CUT their wages. I KNOW that Montana teachers are earning far less then they deserve. One teacher in particular at my old highschool doesn't get enough credit for the work she does.

[Kelly Antilles]

I can't say since I"m not a teacher or have a child in school, but as far as I know, kindergarteners go all day now.

[neoolong]

I can't say since I"m not a teacher or have a child in school, but as far as I know, kindergarteners go all day now.

Really? Wow. I've been out of kindergarten for a long time.

[Knife]

I can't say since I"m not a teacher or have a child in school, but as far as I know, kindergarteners go all day now.

And if they don't, they probably have two half day classes back to back.

[neoolong]

I can't say since I"m not a teacher or have a child in school, but as far as I know, kindergarteners go all day now.

And if they don't, they probably have two half day classes back to back.

Maybe it was just me, but I remember the ones at my school didn't.

[Zaia]

what's the difference between a teacher being paid in K or HS?

Isn't the pay different? I remember kindergarten was half day, wouldn't that make the pay less than that of a HS teacher? It would have been better if they had given averages according to year.

Kindergarten teachers who have half day classes teach two different groups of kids, morning and afternoon. They still have a full day of school, they just swap kids halfway through the day.


Col. Crackpot, that is a GREAT deal your fiancee has. Makes me want to move to Rhode Island. I don't know what subject area she teaches, but it must be nice to be home or on your way at 4pm. Even if she does have a bit of work to do when she gets home, at least she's home.