How many of you who are saying teachers don't get paid enough and only work 9 months of the year actually personally know a teacher well?
When they work for those 9 months they WORK! Most of them go to work at 7:15, get home around 5, grade papers for a few hours, create lesson plans. Then in the summer they still have to go to meetings, and get ready for next year. They have to prepare for any special ed students they might have (which seems to be an increasing amount btw) and learn next years curriculum if there have been any changes.
And then they have to get supplies. They don't have much of a budget for supplies, and most end up spending a few hundred of their own money each year on supplies. How would you like to go to an office to work and then realize you have to buy a computer, and if anything goes wrong with it, pay for it to be fixed and maintained? That's how it is with teacher's supplies.
What I have generally discovered is that the good teachers are the teachers who want to make a difference on kids lives. The ones who work hard with that one person so they can learn that one math technique. The others just don't care. I know a teacher who IM's her boyfriend all day long and puts history movies on and expects the kids to learn? She can't be fired though, oh noooooo shes way too important. I know one who is sexist and racist and if you don't agree with her your wrong. There are a lot of bad teachers out there that can't be fired.
For the most part, I agree with Jobs that principals need the power to fire bad teachers.
This argument is not about the good teachers; its the bad. There are plenty of very dedicated teachers, who do spend the time grading, who do dip into their OWN salary to pay for supplies.....but with the direction going what it is, the bad teachers far outnumber the good.
If the principals had the power to fire bad teachers (not that there wouldn't be some politicizing and good people get canned; welcome to an unfair world), if there was accountability, if education was treated like the rest of the free market, than the good teachers would get paid more and we would attract those who would inspire and make a difference.
The educational system in the USA is completely fucked.
Good teachers get screwed over and the working environment is so shitty that schools sometimes have to hire bad teachers because they've driven away all the good ones.
Teachers are often overworked and spend a ton of time nights and weekends prepping lessons. Due to NCLB, teachers are required to constantly be taking classes (which usually is only partially covered, if at all), so that eats into summers. Teachers often have to pay for supplies out of their own pocket, which can be expensive.
Tenure is a double edged sword, but it's the only thing keeping many good teachers in the profession. Getting rid of it would require many tradeoffs to make teaching more appealing. Without it, many of the best teachers would probably be fired just because they're too expensive and they'd be replaced by newbies with no experience fresh out of college. Hell, even now there are districts that fire all teachers on the verge of getting tenure just to keep costs down and to have the ability to fire anyone for any reason (regardless if they're a bad teacher or not).
Not to mention that generally a teacher is kept from doing a good job by nonsense like NCLB which basically forces them to focus all attention and effort to the kids with the most problems, to the detriment of the average and above average kids. It's all goverment mandated lowest common denominator. And kids are so "protected" by laws that there's tons of red tape making it difficult and slow to be able to do anything about kids who are disruptive and even violent.
It doesn't help that most parents don't give a shit and don't lift a finger to help their kids with education or discipline.
There's certainly room for improvement in the union/tenure situation, but it needs to be something that still protects good teachers and limits "firing bad teachers" to teachers that are actually bad, and not just too expensive.
My buddy's wife is a very good teacher and she structures her time efficiently. She makes use of teacher in-service days, she uses strategy's of homework and class participation that minimize massive every night grading, her principal is good and keeps meeting to a minimum.
Even so, if a teacher works hard during the week; she gets every 3-day weekend imaginable, 2.5 months off in the summer, 2-3 weeks at Chrismas, 1 week at Easter, PLUS the usual personal time, sick time, and vacation time.
I call shenanigans on your numbers....they don't match up with my friend's at all.
I'm not sure I agree with the numbers either, but those 3 weekends and vacations are UNPAID. We are paid only for days worked.
Sigh. This has to be one of the biggest misconceptions out there. Most teachers work 10 months out of the year - they have a lot of meeting before and after the end of the school year. AND, in those 10 months, they work more than most Americans do in 12 months. My fianace works on a average day from 7:15 till 5:30 at school and them comes home and grades papers a couple of hours every night. Then, throw in extra-curricular activities like track coach or drama.
Some math:
10.25 hours at school + 2 hours grading = 12.25 hours/day.
Are you for real, or are you just trying to be funny? The average teacher doesn't work anywhere near 12.25 hours a day. Perhaps your fiance is the exception, but come on teachers do not work over 12 hours a day on average. Plus, including all of the hours at school is a bit of a farce. Does your fiance not get a lunch break or have any periods during the day when she is not teaching?
Google "are teachers underpaid" to find a long list of articles that point out some of the facts involved. Here's a link to one of them. Among the facts pointed out are that many teachers work no more than 7 hours a day at school (including their paid lunch hour) due to union contracts.
I'd have to agree with those who are saying that we won't have good teachers in the US until we are willing to pay enough to attract good ones. When I started my undergraduate career I was sold on going into secondary/high school education. I was very fortunate that in one of the first education-related courses I took, the professor had us go out to schools and research how the system worked, interviewed teachers, principals, administrators, etc. After that one class, I changed majors. There was no way I was going through 4 years of college to make that little money and put up with all the BS teachers have to put up with. The way the system works right now anyone with the math and science backgrounds we would want teaching children ... well those same people could make almost twice as much starting out in some other field. The public schools get whoever is left, which is mostly people who care deeply about the kids, but don't think they can or want to study higher level math/science.
Most teachers don't make $40,000 starting out either. I don't know where that number came from. It probably averages around $30,000 with plenty starting out at closer to $25,000. There are some higher starting salaries out there, but only in high income districts (where the competiton for teaching jobs is high and the cost of living is equally high) or some poorer inner city schools (where they they are forced to offer incentives just to get people to work there). Most teachers also work about 10 hours a day during the school year as well. Teachers ought to be getting paid far more than most people make out there, but instead, it is usually around, if not less than, their community's average.
If you want good teachers, you have to be willing to pay for them. Anything else is just talk.
I see you've never taught and never known anyone who did. As someone who's taught kids and adults and whose parents are both teachers, I believe I can say with some authority that you haven't a clue what you're talking about. You're describing university professors here when you say that starting salaries are decent and you can work your way up to a damn good one.
Starting salaries in 8 districts of maryland are now $40K. Yes, K-12. There's a push in this direction and most counties, except those with declining student populations and tax revenues, are expected to do this eventually.
NEA and AFT are pushing for $40K starting nationally.
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You're also partially wrong about this; only in CS are salaries as high as you describe. My parents are in the humanities, and they started out at closer to 30K; 30 years later, they're making nowhere near 100K a year, and they both constantly publish and get on the Excellent Teachers List every single year. I know a lot about academic politics and I can confidently say that college profs who make more than $100,000 a year are few and far between, and they're likely in CS or they're really famous, or both.
My father was a prof that retired a decade ago with at 70K salary at a so-so uni teaching education...not CS. AVERAGE salary at PUBLIC doctoral insitutions are $97K at the full professor level. $127K at private.
Heck...there are COMMUNITY colleges that pay 80+K AVERAGE for full profs.
As well "educated" as you are evidently you can't use a research tool as simple as google.
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It's also a myth that teachers have a lighter workload because they only work 9 months out of each year. The difference is this: teachers take their work home regularly and mandatorily, and I felt the sting of this growing up when my parents couldn't pay attention to me because they were spending hours bludgeoning themselves against the deluded ramblings of beer-swilling frat boys whose academic ambitions were as small as their brains.
BS. My ex wife was a teacher, my current wife was a TA and taught classes as a post-doc, my dad a prof and I've worked at a uni as a researcher and am thinking of trying my hand as an adjunct instructor for night school.
Yes, they took work home during the school year but after you've done it a year or two and all your lesson plans are stable the workload at home IS light. And if you don't work the summer session you can relax OR find another job.
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At a normal 9 to 5 job, you're finished when you come home.
Yes, because no one else brings work home with them.
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Sure, there's overtime and work you have to do at home, but most of the time you you get paid for this! Teachers get paid precisely zero dollars for the literally countless hours they spend grading homework and preparing lesson plans.
No, salaried folks don't get paid for casual OT or working at home. Same as teachers and it ain't "countless" hours anyway.
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As for the summer, there are usually a couple weeks of mandatory meetings and planning sessions. On top of this, many teachers are required to take training classes, and many who don't do so voluntarily at their own expense. Sure, many don't, and they tranish the profession and help spin the myth that teachers are lazy and overpaid. Teachers may only technically work 9 months a year, but those months are filled with much more unpaid work than your average profession.
Most other professions don't get the summers off. The only real downside is that taking time off during the school year is tough meaning typically vacations are all in the high-season rates.
And teachers aren't the only ones with continuing education requirements.
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The real problem is that K-12 education is a dead-end career, and everybody in it knows this. Most bad K-12 teachers are bitter because they were once aspiring academics who couldn't make the cut for college work. They know they have few opportunities for advancement, and they know they're going to be poorly paid for the rest of their lives.
This is the most arrogant, incorrect and demeaning thing you've written. None of the K-12 teachers I've known were bitter and most INTENDED to be K-12 teachers to begin with. Those that couldn't cut it in a "academics" and "fell back" into K-12 teaching are the tiny tiny minority.
So much for your "authority" to call someone else clueless.
Maybe you should investigate other districts. My friend gets the same paycheck all year round.
Yes, the school systems we've dealt with will allow you do do either full pay during school year OR spread your pay across the entire year. Your yearly salary is your yearly salary.
If you can't budget well then you do the "spread out across the full year". Otherwise you're better off just getting paid during the school year and remember that you aren't drawing a paycheck during the summer unless you take a second job or teach summer session.
We've come a LONG way from the hard labor of mines with grossly negligent employers who don't care if one gets killed.
Just about 13 months ago 13 coal miners died from a mine explosion. The mining company was found to have been negligent in keeping up with safety requirements. So much for a LONG way, huh?
Just to put this in focus a bit. In Texas, where this comment was made, the state starting salary is $27,320. You can top out after 20 plus years at $44,270.
There are many school districts in Texas where this is all you get. There are some in the metro areas that pay above this.
If the public schools are consistently failing in any district, there should always be an option to bring in private management. I've seen education corporations come in and really turn schools around.
Just about 13 months ago 13 coal miners died from a mine explosion. The mining company was found to have been negligent in keeping up with safety requirements. So much for a LONG way, huh?
1 company, 1 time? Get real man. We live in a PARADISE compared to 100 years ago. A negligent mine company is by far the exception, not the rule.
We live in an extremely spoiled rotten time. It is more than conceivable that somebody can be born, live a rich childhood with all the toys and experiences, easily go to college, perform mediocrely at work, live a long time, and die with virtually no real hardship in their life. People working a dangeous line of work and getting killed by negligence due to greed is a statistical zero, not a statistical probability.
There's no military draft. Police are less than 5 minutes away. Food is abundant. Medical care and educaton is a stone's throw from you at any point in time, and is even provided free if you can't hack it on your own. We're saturated with every type of entertainment and activity possible, and virtually all of it is risk-free. Get some perspective man....we live in the best damn time possible, and there are billions in the world without these qualities of life.....and you want to shoot down my entire point that labor is a 180 degree turn from 100 years ago based on 1 example 13 months ago?
AVERAGE salary at PUBLIC doctoral insitutions are $97K at the full professor level. $127K at private.
I think that engineering, business, and CS program skew those averages. Social science academia is a whole different game, especially if you're not dealing with a tier-1 research institution.
Reading through the string of comments concerning teacher pay stemming from JOBS,s comments, I get the distinct impression that teacher's pay is misunderstood. Last time I taught secondary and college level classes I worked 9 months out of each year. If I chose to teach summer school, my salary increase proportionately to the number of months additional I taught. State and city governments set teachers pay. Not the Federal government. According to USA Today, the average teachers pay in FY2004, was $46752 (9 Months). That is the equivalent of $62,336 for a 12 month work year. Not all teachers have the opportunity to teach 12 months out of the year so they either get a summer job or live on their 9 month salary. Teachers who don't make the average can, like me early in my career, continue their education during nights and summers. Masters Degrees make more than Bachelor Degrees and Doctor Degrees make considerably more than Masters. Another way to increase pay is to move to a state and school district that pays more. The bottom line is, if you want more pay for the hours you work, you have to continually improve yourself.
Teachers don't like Bush's approach to education because it measures teacher performance through student academic achievement. A "GOOD" teacher performance is rewarded. A "POOR" performance is not. Does that mean we need to fire the POOR performing teacher? Probably not, but they should not expect pay equivalent to the better performing teachers.
Steve Jobs suggestions for innovation in the tools we use to teach with while, at the same time, cutting the cost, is commendable. This is a person who offers solutions to problems that have plagued our educational system for as long as I can remember. It's a breath of fresh air in an institution that can get pretty stuffy at times. Educators should pay attention and learn from a successful business people offering alternatives to the status quo.
I applaud you for your sacrifice; you have obvious dedication to the youth of America. I respect education.....not endless administration and mediocre performance.
However, you are the exception....not the rule. I invite you to check out some school districts in the central valley of California; another friend of mine makes more than you with only 10 years of experience and no extra credentials.
I don't think I am the exception. I am in Maine and really only know about New England schools. My daughter teaches in MA. The salaries are better there, but nothing like what you are describing. Maine recently mandated at least $30,000 as starting pay, but did nothing for those at the top.
The lack of respect is the real problem. Teachers are not respected by sociey and therefore they are not respected by the students. It is a myth that teachers cannot be fired. They do have to be fired for just cause and that requires documentation. The principals, who are REALLY stuck in the middle and are underpaid, do not have the time to do that. They have to deal with discipline and paperwork. NCLB has added an incredible layer of bureaucracy to the whole mess. Just to meet "qualified" status many teachers had to go back to school. It was mostly because in a middle school teachers often teach 3 or more subjects. No one has a college major in all 3. How humiliating to be told you can't teach 7th grade math because you only have 18 college credits!
To answer a little bit some of the other points on the thread--- Good teachers are leaving. Many are retiring early (like me) because the stress is too much. The new teachers coming in are a product of the same system that needs to be fixed!!!
The solution is certainly not a simple one. Telling teachers they are the problem will not work. We won't be scapegoats anymore. This is a NATIONAL issue, a societal issue. Hopefully the next president will be one who can see colors other than black and white.
Comments
How many of you who are saying teachers don't get paid enough and only work 9 months of the year actually personally know a teacher well?
When they work for those 9 months they WORK! Most of them go to work at 7:15, get home around 5, grade papers for a few hours, create lesson plans. Then in the summer they still have to go to meetings, and get ready for next year. They have to prepare for any special ed students they might have (which seems to be an increasing amount btw) and learn next years curriculum if there have been any changes.
And then they have to get supplies. They don't have much of a budget for supplies, and most end up spending a few hundred of their own money each year on supplies. How would you like to go to an office to work and then realize you have to buy a computer, and if anything goes wrong with it, pay for it to be fixed and maintained? That's how it is with teacher's supplies.
What I have generally discovered is that the good teachers are the teachers who want to make a difference on kids lives. The ones who work hard with that one person so they can learn that one math technique. The others just don't care. I know a teacher who IM's her boyfriend all day long and puts history movies on and expects the kids to learn? She can't be fired though, oh noooooo shes way too important. I know one who is sexist and racist and if you don't agree with her your wrong. There are a lot of bad teachers out there that can't be fired.
For the most part, I agree with Jobs that principals need the power to fire bad teachers.
This argument is not about the good teachers; its the bad. There are plenty of very dedicated teachers, who do spend the time grading, who do dip into their OWN salary to pay for supplies.....but with the direction going what it is, the bad teachers far outnumber the good.
If the principals had the power to fire bad teachers (not that there wouldn't be some politicizing and good people get canned; welcome to an unfair world), if there was accountability, if education was treated like the rest of the free market, than the good teachers would get paid more and we would attract those who would inspire and make a difference.
pretty talented people to do that. I don't know that enough of them get attracted to
go into public education. You can't even support a family on what you get paid. I'd
like the people teaching my kids to be good enough that they could get a job at the
company I work for, making a hundred thousand dollars a year. Why should they
work at a school for thirty-five to forty thousand dollars if they could get a job here at
a hundred thousand dollars a year? Is that an intelligence test? The problem there of
course is the unions. The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education
because it's not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has
happened. The teachers can't teach and administrators run the place and nobody can
be fired. It's terrible. "
"One of the things I feel is that, right now, if you ask who are the customers of
education, the customers of education are the society at large, the employers who hire
people, things like that. But ultimately I think the customers are the parents. Not
even the students but the parents. The problem that we have in this country is that
the customers went away. The customers stopped paying attention to their schools,
for the most part. What happened was that mothers started working and they didn't
have time to spend at PTA meetings and watching their kids' school. Schools became
much more institutionalized and parents spent less and less and less time involved in
their kids' education.
What happens when a customer goes away and a monopoly gets control, which is
what happened in our country, is that the service level almost always goes down. I
remember seeing a bumper sticker when the telephone company was all one. I
remember seeing a bumper sticker with the Bell Logo on it and it said "We don't
care. We don't have to." And that's what a monopoly is. That's what IBM was in
their day. And that's certainly what the public school system is. They don't have to
care.
Let's go through some economics. The most expensive thing people buy in their lives
is a house. The second most expensive thing is a car, usually, and an average car costs
approximately twenty thousand dollars. And an average car lasts about eight years.
Then you buy another one. Approximately two thousand dollars a year over an eight
year period. Well, your child goes to school approximately eight years in K through 8.
What does the State of California spent per pupil per year in a public school? About
forty-four hundred dollars. Over twice as much as a car. It turns out that when you go
to buy a car you have a lot of information available to you to make a choice and you
have a lot of choices. General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota and Nissan. They are
advertising to you like crazy. I can't get through a day without seeing five car ads.
And they seem to be able to make these cars efficiently enough that they can afford to
take some of my money and advertise to other people. So that everybody knows
about all these cars and they keep getting better and better because there's a lot of
competition."
But in schools people don't feel that
they're spending their own money. They feel like it's free, right? No one does any
comparison shopping. A matter of fact if you want to put your kid in a private school,
you can't take the forty-four hundred dollars a year out of the public school and use
it, you have to come up with five or six thousand of your own money. "
"I believe very strongly that if the country gave each parent a voucher for forty-four
hundred dollars that they could only spend at any accredited school several things
would happen. Number one schools would start marketing themselves like crazy to
get students. Secondly, I think you'd see a lot of new schools starting. I've suggested
as an example, if you go to Stanford Business School, they have a public policy track;
they could start a school administrator track. You could get a bunch of people coming
out of college tying up with someone out of the business school, they could be
starting their own school. You could have twenty-five year old students out of college,
very idealistic, full of energy instead of starting a Silicon Valley company, they'd start
a school. I believe that they would do far better than any of our public schools would.
The third thing you'd see is I believe, is the quality of schools again, just in a
competitive marketplace, start to rise. Some of the schools would go broke. A lot of
the public schools would go broke. There's no question about it. It would be rather
painful for the first several years"
I tend to agree with everything steve had said regarding education in that interview, that would be the one from 1995.
Good teachers get screwed over and the working environment is so shitty that schools sometimes have to hire bad teachers because they've driven away all the good ones.
Teachers are often overworked and spend a ton of time nights and weekends prepping lessons. Due to NCLB, teachers are required to constantly be taking classes (which usually is only partially covered, if at all), so that eats into summers. Teachers often have to pay for supplies out of their own pocket, which can be expensive.
Tenure is a double edged sword, but it's the only thing keeping many good teachers in the profession. Getting rid of it would require many tradeoffs to make teaching more appealing. Without it, many of the best teachers would probably be fired just because they're too expensive and they'd be replaced by newbies with no experience fresh out of college. Hell, even now there are districts that fire all teachers on the verge of getting tenure just to keep costs down and to have the ability to fire anyone for any reason (regardless if they're a bad teacher or not).
Not to mention that generally a teacher is kept from doing a good job by nonsense like NCLB which basically forces them to focus all attention and effort to the kids with the most problems, to the detriment of the average and above average kids. It's all goverment mandated lowest common denominator. And kids are so "protected" by laws that there's tons of red tape making it difficult and slow to be able to do anything about kids who are disruptive and even violent.
It doesn't help that most parents don't give a shit and don't lift a finger to help their kids with education or discipline.
There's certainly room for improvement in the union/tenure situation, but it needs to be something that still protects good teachers and limits "firing bad teachers" to teachers that are actually bad, and not just too expensive.
My buddy's wife is a very good teacher and she structures her time efficiently. She makes use of teacher in-service days, she uses strategy's of homework and class participation that minimize massive every night grading, her principal is good and keeps meeting to a minimum.
Even so, if a teacher works hard during the week; she gets every 3-day weekend imaginable, 2.5 months off in the summer, 2-3 weeks at Chrismas, 1 week at Easter, PLUS the usual personal time, sick time, and vacation time.
I call shenanigans on your numbers....they don't match up with my friend's at all.
I'm not sure I agree with the numbers either, but those 3 weekends and vacations are UNPAID. We are paid only for days worked.
I'm not sure I agree with the numbers either, but those 3 weekends and vacations are UNPAID. We are paid only for days worked.
Sorry, that should be 3 day weekends.
I'm not sure I agree with the numbers either, but those 3 weekends and vacations are UNPAID. We are paid only for days worked.
Maybe you should investigate other districts. My friend gets the same paycheck all year round.
Sigh. This has to be one of the biggest misconceptions out there. Most teachers work 10 months out of the year - they have a lot of meeting before and after the end of the school year. AND, in those 10 months, they work more than most Americans do in 12 months. My fianace works on a average day from 7:15 till 5:30 at school and them comes home and grades papers a couple of hours every night. Then, throw in extra-curricular activities like track coach or drama.
Some math:
10.25 hours at school + 2 hours grading = 12.25 hours/day.
8 hours/day * 4 weeks of meetings = 160 hours
12.25 hours/day * 180 days teaching = 2205 hours
160 + 2205 = 2365 hours/year
vs.
45 hours/week * 50 weeks (52 - 2 weeks vacation) = 2250 hours/year
Are you for real, or are you just trying to be funny? The average teacher doesn't work anywhere near 12.25 hours a day. Perhaps your fiance is the exception, but come on teachers do not work over 12 hours a day on average. Plus, including all of the hours at school is a bit of a farce. Does your fiance not get a lunch break or have any periods during the day when she is not teaching?
Google "are teachers underpaid" to find a long list of articles that point out some of the facts involved. Here's a link to one of them. Among the facts pointed out are that many teachers work no more than 7 hours a day at school (including their paid lunch hour) due to union contracts.
http://www.nationalreview.com/nr_com...ment061603.asp
Most teachers don't make $40,000 starting out either. I don't know where that number came from. It probably averages around $30,000 with plenty starting out at closer to $25,000. There are some higher starting salaries out there, but only in high income districts (where the competiton for teaching jobs is high and the cost of living is equally high) or some poorer inner city schools (where they they are forced to offer incentives just to get people to work there). Most teachers also work about 10 hours a day during the school year as well. Teachers ought to be getting paid far more than most people make out there, but instead, it is usually around, if not less than, their community's average.
If you want good teachers, you have to be willing to pay for them. Anything else is just talk.
I see you've never taught and never known anyone who did. As someone who's taught kids and adults and whose parents are both teachers, I believe I can say with some authority that you haven't a clue what you're talking about. You're describing university professors here when you say that starting salaries are decent and you can work your way up to a damn good one.
Starting salaries in 8 districts of maryland are now $40K. Yes, K-12. There's a push in this direction and most counties, except those with declining student populations and tax revenues, are expected to do this eventually.
NEA and AFT are pushing for $40K starting nationally.
You're also partially wrong about this; only in CS are salaries as high as you describe. My parents are in the humanities, and they started out at closer to 30K; 30 years later, they're making nowhere near 100K a year, and they both constantly publish and get on the Excellent Teachers List every single year. I know a lot about academic politics and I can confidently say that college profs who make more than $100,000 a year are few and far between, and they're likely in CS or they're really famous, or both.
My father was a prof that retired a decade ago with at 70K salary at a so-so uni teaching education...not CS. AVERAGE salary at PUBLIC doctoral insitutions are $97K at the full professor level. $127K at private.
http://www.insidehighered.com/workplace/2005/04/25/pay
Heck...there are COMMUNITY colleges that pay 80+K AVERAGE for full profs.
As well "educated" as you are evidently you can't use a research tool as simple as google.
It's also a myth that teachers have a lighter workload because they only work 9 months out of each year. The difference is this: teachers take their work home regularly and mandatorily, and I felt the sting of this growing up when my parents couldn't pay attention to me because they were spending hours bludgeoning themselves against the deluded ramblings of beer-swilling frat boys whose academic ambitions were as small as their brains.
BS. My ex wife was a teacher, my current wife was a TA and taught classes as a post-doc, my dad a prof and I've worked at a uni as a researcher and am thinking of trying my hand as an adjunct instructor for night school.
Yes, they took work home during the school year but after you've done it a year or two and all your lesson plans are stable the workload at home IS light. And if you don't work the summer session you can relax OR find another job.
At a normal 9 to 5 job, you're finished when you come home.
Yes, because no one else brings work home with them.
Sure, there's overtime and work you have to do at home, but most of the time you you get paid for this! Teachers get paid precisely zero dollars for the literally countless hours they spend grading homework and preparing lesson plans.
No, salaried folks don't get paid for casual OT or working at home. Same as teachers and it ain't "countless" hours anyway.
As for the summer, there are usually a couple weeks of mandatory meetings and planning sessions. On top of this, many teachers are required to take training classes, and many who don't do so voluntarily at their own expense. Sure, many don't, and they tranish the profession and help spin the myth that teachers are lazy and overpaid. Teachers may only technically work 9 months a year, but those months are filled with much more unpaid work than your average profession.
Most other professions don't get the summers off. The only real downside is that taking time off during the school year is tough meaning typically vacations are all in the high-season rates.
And teachers aren't the only ones with continuing education requirements.
The real problem is that K-12 education is a dead-end career, and everybody in it knows this. Most bad K-12 teachers are bitter because they were once aspiring academics who couldn't make the cut for college work. They know they have few opportunities for advancement, and they know they're going to be poorly paid for the rest of their lives.
This is the most arrogant, incorrect and demeaning thing you've written. None of the K-12 teachers I've known were bitter and most INTENDED to be K-12 teachers to begin with. Those that couldn't cut it in a "academics" and "fell back" into K-12 teaching are the tiny tiny minority.
So much for your "authority" to call someone else clueless.
Vinea
Maybe you should investigate other districts. My friend gets the same paycheck all year round.
Yes, the school systems we've dealt with will allow you do do either full pay during school year OR spread your pay across the entire year. Your yearly salary is your yearly salary.
If you can't budget well then you do the "spread out across the full year". Otherwise you're better off just getting paid during the school year and remember that you aren't drawing a paycheck during the summer unless you take a second job or teach summer session.
Vinea
We've come a LONG way from the hard labor of mines with grossly negligent employers who don't care if one gets killed.
Just about 13 months ago 13 coal miners died from a mine explosion. The mining company was found to have been negligent in keeping up with safety requirements. So much for a LONG way, huh?
There are many school districts in Texas where this is all you get. There are some in the metro areas that pay above this.
He's right. Having a union to get better pay is ok, but when an incompetent person can't be fired they've gone too far, gotten too greedy.
Yup, it's hard when you can't fire incompetents. Teachers and presidents, same problem.
Just about 13 months ago 13 coal miners died from a mine explosion. The mining company was found to have been negligent in keeping up with safety requirements. So much for a LONG way, huh?
1 company, 1 time? Get real man. We live in a PARADISE compared to 100 years ago. A negligent mine company is by far the exception, not the rule.
We live in an extremely spoiled rotten time. It is more than conceivable that somebody can be born, live a rich childhood with all the toys and experiences, easily go to college, perform mediocrely at work, live a long time, and die with virtually no real hardship in their life. People working a dangeous line of work and getting killed by negligence due to greed is a statistical zero, not a statistical probability.
There's no military draft. Police are less than 5 minutes away. Food is abundant. Medical care and educaton is a stone's throw from you at any point in time, and is even provided free if you can't hack it on your own. We're saturated with every type of entertainment and activity possible, and virtually all of it is risk-free. Get some perspective man....we live in the best damn time possible, and there are billions in the world without these qualities of life.....and you want to shoot down my entire point that labor is a 180 degree turn from 100 years ago based on 1 example 13 months ago?
AVERAGE salary at PUBLIC doctoral insitutions are $97K at the full professor level. $127K at private.
I think that engineering, business, and CS program skew those averages. Social science academia is a whole different game, especially if you're not dealing with a tier-1 research institution.
Yup, it's hard when you can't fire incompetents. Teachers and presidents, same problem.
At least you can get the chance to re-elect the president every 4 years. If its REALLY bad, you can impeach him/her.
It takes more than an act of congress to can a bad teacher.
Teachers don't like Bush's approach to education because it measures teacher performance through student academic achievement. A "GOOD" teacher performance is rewarded. A "POOR" performance is not. Does that mean we need to fire the POOR performing teacher? Probably not, but they should not expect pay equivalent to the better performing teachers.
Steve Jobs suggestions for innovation in the tools we use to teach with while, at the same time, cutting the cost, is commendable. This is a person who offers solutions to problems that have plagued our educational system for as long as I can remember. It's a breath of fresh air in an institution that can get pretty stuffy at times. Educators should pay attention and learn from a successful business people offering alternatives to the status quo.
I applaud you for your sacrifice; you have obvious dedication to the youth of America. I respect education.....not endless administration and mediocre performance.
However, you are the exception....not the rule. I invite you to check out some school districts in the central valley of California; another friend of mine makes more than you with only 10 years of experience and no extra credentials.
I don't think I am the exception. I am in Maine and really only know about New England schools. My daughter teaches in MA. The salaries are better there, but nothing like what you are describing. Maine recently mandated at least $30,000 as starting pay, but did nothing for those at the top.
The lack of respect is the real problem. Teachers are not respected by sociey and therefore they are not respected by the students. It is a myth that teachers cannot be fired. They do have to be fired for just cause and that requires documentation. The principals, who are REALLY stuck in the middle and are underpaid, do not have the time to do that. They have to deal with discipline and paperwork. NCLB has added an incredible layer of bureaucracy to the whole mess. Just to meet "qualified" status many teachers had to go back to school. It was mostly because in a middle school teachers often teach 3 or more subjects. No one has a college major in all 3. How humiliating to be told you can't teach 7th grade math because you only have 18 college credits!
To answer a little bit some of the other points on the thread--- Good teachers are leaving. Many are retiring early (like me) because the stress is too much. The new teachers coming in are a product of the same system that needs to be fixed!!!
The solution is certainly not a simple one. Telling teachers they are the problem will not work. We won't be scapegoats anymore. This is a NATIONAL issue, a societal issue. Hopefully the next president will be one who can see colors other than black and white.