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sc94597 said:
The average starting salary for a teacher in the U.S is about $34,000(which is close to the individual median of all incomes.) That comes out to something like 23-30$ /hr depending on the average number of hours said teacher works per day for 9 months. Considering teaching is a full time job with benefits and armageddon proof job security(tenure ) while babysitting has none of these things. It is not very comparable. How much people are worth to their employer depends on how much productivity or of what quality services they can perform. Of course public jobs are not as subjected to market mechanisms and consequently a lot of money is wasted on things other than teaching labor, which also do not constitute productive capital. For that reason teachers should take it up with school administrations and not the taxpayer, if they don't feel they are paid fairly. As it is now the U.S spends. more on education per kid than any other country. But then the standards of becoming a teacher are also much lower in most U.S states than other countries, with PhD's and Masters degrees being quite common among secondary school educators in other countries, whilst many teachers in the U.S were in the bottom half of their respective subjects (especially in stem fields.) I mean the unions representing police, teachers, etc are some of the most powerful and have gotten benefits which private workers envy, on top of an average salary. What kind of salaries do starting teachers want? Something comparable to doctors, engineers or programmers? |
That may be close to the median of all incomes, but I'm sure it's a LOT less than the average of professional (degree requiring) jobs. Take out the minimum wage and non-certified jobs and I bet teaching comes out on the lower end.
Teachers work, often, in the 50-65 hour per week range, a lot more than 40, and we get paid for roughly 33-35 hours of that time that we do work, and the other stuff we essentially don't get paid for. We don't get summers "off" in the sense that we are paid. If we are paid during the summer, it is because we are voluntarily (or being forced by the district) to sacrifice money we get from our paychecks in order to spread it out over 12 months. Many teachers can't afford to take the summer off despite working far more hours and in a far more stressful environment than many jobs so they can't even take a break.
Tenure is something you get after years of working. I'm a 1st-2nd year teacher, still years away from getting tenure. All tenure does, by the way, is make it so someone can't be fired for no reason. If I get bad test scores, I could still be fired with tenure. Prior to tenure, I could be let go randomly for no reason.
Most teachers I know/work with have their masters, specialists, or Phd, and I work in a pretty undesirable environment (low income/high crime school and area). I graduated in 2013 and plan on starting my Masters in the next year or two. Teachers in other countries ARE paid the same amount as doctors and are VALUED in other countries. That's how it used to be in this country.
I pay 14.5% of my paycheck towards retirement. Teachers have some of the highest retirement payments of any job. I won't deny we have good benefits (at least, if your by yourself for sure), but the retirement payment hurts. Thankfully it doesn't go into social security where politicians get to waste the money on ridiculous things and we don't have to worry about the Baby Boomer crisis impacting our retirement age, but it's still a lot of money per paycheck.
