Be A Teacher Be a Fool

Off Topic
61

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:
And there, Ladies & Gentlemen, you have the reason our public schools suck. Because they have no competition, no incentive to excell. If Doogie doesn’t excell, he doesn’t have a job (just like the rest of us). If a public teacher doesn’t excell, oh well…
[/quote]

Low standards, public apathy, and crap funding would be why your public schools suck, not lack of competition. A private school system only serves to make the imbalance of education more pronounced.

Crime rates are traditionally highest in areas where education is the poorest. It then becomes a self-defeating cycle, ensuring a level of social instability that would make your current ghetto problems look like a cakewalk in comparison.

The public school system can be a phenomenal tool when used correctly. Its current sad state has little to do with its nature, and more with the errors of its use. Seeking equality of results in funding is the first step.

62

[quote]PSlave wrote:
Following are full-time hourly earnings for those professions, from the National Compensation Survey: Occupational Wages in the
United States, July 2004:

Health aides, except nursing: $11.65
Telephone operators: $13.11
Nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants: $10.20
Registered nurses: $26.87
Executives, administrators and managers: $36.22
Teachers, except college and university: $30.91

[/quote]

$30.91/hr. That’s pretty damn good money.

63

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Executives, administrators and managers: $36.22
Teachers, except college and university: $30.91

How much of this data is skewed by upper level management that make X00% more than the average worker?
[/quote]

Well, the “Teachers, except college and university” figure does not include “Administrators, education and related fields.” Those individuals are listed as making $35.77/hour.

64

[quote]daven wrote:

Do you want to know why there are so many bad teachers? Because many of the people who would make excellent teachers realized that they could not live on the salary teachers make. [/quote]

Quite the overstatement - living on a teachers wage is not impossible - however, you’re sacrificing a nicer house, a nicer ride, and basic luxury to do so -

I know a lot of teachers who do very well - although modest and not in need of having a brand new car or new boat or puting their kids in Ambercrombie…they still seem to do OK.

It’s hard to be a high-roller on a teacher’s wage, but you can survive…

CR

65

[quote]Northcott wrote:
When you take into account weekends for spacing, that works out to 35 weeks a year. Math wasn’t your strong suit, was it?

When you throw in the extra hours a good teacher works, you get a much larger figure.

“Easiest damn job on the planet” remains the warcry of the woefully ignorant.
[/quote]

Alright, using you figures, a teacher works 35 weeks/year, or 67%. Most people probably average 49 weeks/year, or 94%. That means teachers have 14 WEEKS more free time than the average American. Stop your whining.

66

[quote]daven wrote:
To all of you who think teachers make good money, let me put this in front of you:
My mother has been a teacher for 34 years. One of her friends has been teaching for 29 years, and another for 33 years. All have received commendations for excellent teaching. All have masters degrees in education. They all make about $55K/year.

Because many of the people who would make excellent teachers realized that they could not live on the salary teachers make. Add in the fact that very few districts have any real training, and you get bad teachers.
[/quote]

While I am not arguing that teachers are not sufficiently appreciated, I do take issue with a few points here.

First of all, why is $55k per year not defined as “good money?” I mean, seriously!

Second, why could someone “not live on the salary that teachers make,” assuming teachers are compensated at $55k per year?

Really! Live within your means! And $55k per year IS good money!

67

[quote]Northcott wrote:

Low standards, public apathy, and crap funding would be why your public schools suck, not lack of competition. A private school system only serves to make the imbalance of education more pronounced.
[/quote]

Just so you understand, Charter schools are not private schools. They are public schools that are tuition free. They serve as alternatives to the traditional public schools.

68

Does anyone know the stats on the average education levels of teachers?

It might be advantageous to consider the commitment of time and money that higher education represents, if this is a factor.

69

[quote]reddog6376 wrote:
IronGame08 wrote:

My kids have 175 days of school/year. Which means that teachers only work 1/2 the year. So to compare your Dad’s salary to other industries you’ld have to nearly double it to make it a valid comparison. $160,000 is a pretty good salary.

[/quote]

My wife is an elementary school teacher…she brings work home every day, works in the summer,etc. My old man was a HS math teacher(had an engineering degree but at the time he couldn’t find a engineering job) and he had to have a summer job up until I was in college. Combine that with having to deal with dumbass parents all day and teachers are saints in my book.

Anybody whos says differently obviously had forgotten where he/she has come from and what it took to get where they are today.

70

I think everyone is missing the larger issue. That is teacher’s lack of potential to make better money relative to the remaining workforce after being in the career field a significant anount of time.

Personally, I don’t think “twenty somethings” have any business in a classroom unless they are on the recieving end. It would be nice to see more professionals entering the classroom that have had the opportunity to grow and mature in the private sector. This will have a two fold benefit of 1) having experienced teachers teach applicable lesson plans based on REAL world knowledge and 2) only people who are willing to accept the pay cut will take the job thus legitimizing current teacher payscale.

Of course, if we made it illegal to employ 20 yr olds as teachers their pay would have to go up becasue no educated 30 something would work for less than $30k in their right mind.

71

It might also be pointed out that, since public school teachers are essentially government employees, they operate OUTSIDE of the market economy where merit, job performance, and value added to an organization are all considered when determining pay. You make what the state says you make and you have little to no negotiating leverage. I’m not making a value judgment, just pointing it out.

Also, the teachers unions fight tooth and nail against any hint of competition against their monopoly (i.e. vouchers, etc.). Again, not saying it’s good or bad, just that it is. Prospective teachers should be thoroughly aware of these factors and weigh them into their ponderings of career choice.

72

[quote]Todd S. wrote:
Headhunter wrote:

Was it a bachelors degree? I just read where accounting starts at $41,000.

Were you responsible, in part, for the lives of 140 children?

What’s that worth? What an accounting clerk makes?

yeah that is a bachelors degree and there are a lot of other factors and different feilds within accounting. Audit work tends to pay more.

I think teachers make plenty, I guess if they don’t agree they should stop doing it. I already pay enough in taxes to the school and I don’t want to pay any more. I also remember shitty the teachers at my school were and they were not earning what they got paid.

I’m still interested in what you think is a fair salary?

I would probably support a performance based pay scale.

[/quote]

What most people fail to understand is…garbage in, garbage out. Several here have said how crappy some of their teachers were. Well, surprise, surprise, surprise, Gomer!! Society wants an effect (an educated populace) without a cause. It wants to have top-quality teaching at cut-rate prices. Nope. Reality can’t be cheated forever.

And if I told you that your pay is lower because you got cheated too (by underfunding education), it’d make sense, wouldn’t it?

Why are other countries racing ahead of us in many ways? Ya’ll get 3 guesses.

73

[quote]tonyclifton wrote:
Quality of teachers, and in effect, quality of schools has little to do with pay. The reason so many schools are low quality is because our schooling system is mostly a government monopoly, i.e. no competition (just the like the US postal system). The result is high ineffiency and low quality, since schools do not have to compete against each other for students. Just look at the current state of public schools and this is fairly obvious. As with pay, it is safe to assume that if schools did have to compete over students, then the BEST teachers at the BEST schools would make the most money. The idea that more pay causes teachers to perform better is a little presumptious; it is better to say great teachers should make more money because they are great teachers.

That’s not to say it will be all that easy to measure teacher performance. After all, the no-child left behind issue merely created the incentive for teachers to cheat rather than perform better. [/quote]

Schools in China, for example, are government-run, but the teachers are revered and paid well. Teaching is considered one of the very noblest professions.

Here, many think your a moron for wanting to try to teach. The kids think that only losers go into education. What a shame.

74

[quote]PSlave wrote:
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, “earnings averaged $18.09 per hour in July 2004 for
private industry and State and local government workers in the United States. Average hourly earnings were lower for private industry workers ($17.25) than for State and local government workers ($22.77) in July 2004.”

Following are the occupations projected to grow at the fastest rate between 2004 and 2014, arranged by type of training:

Short-term on-the-job training
Home Health Aides (56%)

Moderate-term on-the-job training
Customer service representatives (23%)

Post-secondary vocational award
Nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants (22%)

Associate degree
Registered nurses (29%)

Bachelor’s or higher degree, plus work experience
General and operations managers (17%)

Doctoral degree
Postsecondary teachers (29%)

Following are full-time hourly earnings for those professions, from the National Compensation Survey: Occupational Wages in the
United States, July 2004:

Health aides, except nursing: $11.65
Telephone operators: $13.11
Nursing aides, orderlies, and attendants: $10.20
Registered nurses: $26.87
Executives, administrators and managers: $36.22
Teachers, except college and university: $30.91

Now, I would certainly welcome someone to check for additional surveys as that’s the first time I’ve pulled such information.

I’ll also be the first to say that statistics can be manipulated in all sorts of interesting ways. However, in light of these numbers, where’s the problem?[/quote]

It appears that they are using face-time with the students and annualizing that. That’s like judging your CPA’s pay, dividing it by the number of hours they see clients, and figuring it that way. “He saw clients for 2 hours that day. So, wow, he makes $70 an hour!” How about some annual totals? Much more accurate.

Starting pay for most teachers across the country is in the high 20’s, about $28,000 per year.

75

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Revo09 wrote:
I think another thing people have to take into account is the intensity of the work. Im an accountant so my job is no means short of hours and stress but the truth is, if Im having a bad day, I can take a few minutes here and there… if youre a teacher you are on ALL DAY… if you slack off even a little bit, not only are you not living up to your contract but kids will sense that weakness and prey on you and Ive seen it take its toll on even the toughest substitute earning summer money, let alone the teacher who uses this as their living… I dont know, I would personally like to see both the quality and the pay rise for teachers and I would never want to be one…

Teachers have a number of breaks built into the day. They are not in front of students the whole time.[/quote]

True. But now, when you have to shit and it’s 90 minutes until one of those breaks, what do you do? Do you leave a roomful of teens alone for 10 minutes? LOL. I wouldn’t have a room left.

76

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

Personally, I don’t think “twenty somethings” have any business in a classroom unless they are on the recieving end. It would be nice to see more professionals entering the classroom that have had the opportunity to grow and mature in the private sector. This will have a two fold benefit of 1) having experienced teachers teach applicable lesson plans based on REAL world knowledge .
[/quote]

I am not convinced that a teacher beginning at 30 would be much different from one starting in their twenties; both are inexperienced teachers. This expereience has to come sometime, and the only way to get it is in the classroom.

How do you propose to get “experienced teachers” at 30 if they have never set foot in the classroom to teach beforehand?

Real world knowledge is great; you should mention it to those that write curriculum.

-FC

77

just my 2 cents…

I think this discussion depends largely on where you live. I live in the bay area (read silicon valley) and teachers here don’t make shit in comparison with working professionals around here.

I think a teacher with 5 years experience and a Master’s makes about 45-50k a year. The average professional in a G&A position with the same background makes around 75k a year, and an engineer with the same background can find a job for around 110k a year. Couple that with the average house price around here of 625k (which basically gets you a 2 bedroom townhouse in an ok neighborhood), being a teacher sucks.

For this very reason, I went into engineering. Yeah, it’s expensive to live here and all that shit, I know, I’m not complaining about that. But what this boils down to is what is the incentive to be a teacher and live in this area? Our public schools are the worst because no quality teacher would want to live in what is basically poverty here just to teach when they can go somewhere much cheaper to live and get close to if not more pay.

My mom was a teacher here and she has her friends who were teachers with her. The reason they can afford to live here is because they bought their houses in the 60’s and 70’s before the technology boom. A teacher moving to this area now is basically screwed unless they somehow managed to save a few hundred thousand for their down payement.

78

I am a public school teacher and I teach in one of the 2 metro area “rich” districts-in this case Boulder Valley. The rich districts get almost all of the good teachers and its not about pay, its about 1) the attitude of the kids which is generally better here and 2) the quality of your co-workers which is also better. I think that those are the two most important things to a teacher. We still have some teachers that don’t do a good job. Most science teachers at the HS level could also make 50% more if they worked in a lab.

I am in my 9th year and I make almost exactly $50,000 for 187 work days of 7.5 hours (officially). That is about $35 an hour per contract hour, but I personally put in (best estimate) 13 hours average outside of the work day per week. I also put in at least 150 hours per summer working on curriculum development.

I have known teachers who worked the school day, and then went and did bar tending at night for 6 hours and made 150-200% as much at the bar job than as a teacher.

I think MY pay is fair, but if I were not a teacher I would want to increase teacher’s pay because I think schools would have more choice in whom to hire. Often a school gets to the end of the summer and finds out somebody’s not coming back and they literally have to pick up the next available person with a license to fill the job.

We also need a way to get rid of crappy teachers. Our district has worked for this because we don’t want to work with a bunch of incompetent co-workers.

The 75% of the districts that are poorer just don’t have much selection and the bottom 25% have no choice whatsoever.

79

[quote]bigrobbie wrote:
just my 2 cents…

I think this discussion depends largely on where you live. I live in the bay area (read silicon valley) and teachers here don’t make shit in comparison with working professionals around here.

I think a teacher with 5 years experience and a Master’s makes about 45-50k a year. The average professional in a G&A position with the same background makes around 75k a year, and an engineer with the same background can find a job for around 110k a year. Couple that with the average house price around here of 625k (which basically gets you a 2 bedroom townhouse in an ok neighborhood), being a teacher sucks.

For this very reason, I went into engineering. Yeah, it’s expensive to live here and all that shit, I know, I’m not complaining about that. But what this boils down to is what is the incentive to be a teacher and live in this area? Our public schools are the worst because no quality teacher would want to live in what is basically poverty here just to teach when they can go somewhere much cheaper to live and get close to if not more pay.

My mom was a teacher here and she has her friends who were teachers with her. The reason they can afford to live here is because they bought their houses in the 60’s and 70’s before the technology boom. A teacher moving to this area now is basically screwed unless they somehow managed to save a few hundred thousand for their down payement.[/quote]

That is some messed up stuff. How do restaraunt workers, janitors, garbagemen etc. live in your area?

I suspect it is not just teachers having a hard time making ends meet there.

80

[quote]bigrobbie wrote:
I think this discussion depends largely on where you live. [/quote]

Good point–the cost of living in city like New York or LA cannot be compare to some small town. I live in Ontario, Canada so my comments are in relation to here.

High School Teachers with technology and science degrees are paid the same as teachers with Arts Degrees, but local industry does not pay the same. Someone with a math or computer degree makes 50K CAN$ to start around here with lots of room to grow but teachers make about 35K to start with a long time before the would ever be in the 50K range (and a cap at around 65K). I work in the IT department and there are a bunch of qualified Math and Computer teachers who are my co-workers … all of them gave it up because a sense of purpose and summers off didn’t cut it compared to less stress and much higher wages. California pays it teachers better and has much more reasonable teacher student ratios because of this large number of Ontario teachers are relocating to California (but probably not to the Bay area, cause damn living there is expensive).

… having said that I think fixing some of wage disparity isn’t enough to fix the education problems (at least here). I think having better student teacher ratios is going to do more to improve the situation. The best teacher in the world isn’t still being set up to fail with 35+ hormone raging teenagers packed into a classroom sized to hold 22, especially when you through in the fact that the teachers are dealing with a high percentage of kids with ADD, behaviour problems, coming from broken homes, etc. In the past students with those types of problems ended dropping out or getting kicked out, but now they stay in the system putting more burdon on the teachers.

Dustin.